Portonave Plots A Growth Path

On the other side of the River Itajai-Acu, the Portonave terminal, which now sits in the MSC/TIL portfolio, highlights its recent progress. It achieved a 1.1 million TEU throughput in 2021, a notable 29 per cent increase.

Talking to Port Strategy at the company’s stand at the Intermodal South America trade show, Rodrigo Lopes, Commercial Manager, Portonave, told us that last year was an outstanding one mainly because of its strategy of targeting new business from Sao Paulo (Brazil’s financial and industrial heartland), where many shippers had been having problems with congestion out of the port of Santos.

“The congestion in Santos has played into our hands for sure,” said Lopes. “We brought in a lot of frozen meat, auto parts, CKDs and fruit exporters [oranges and lemons mainly] from the Sao Paulo region. This year, however, we are only forecasting an increase of 5.8 per cent as we are facing our own capacity restrictions.”

If not for these restrictions Lopes believes Portonave could post another increase of between 15 and 20 per cent. He notes, however, that with new adjacent land bought measures were now being taken to double terminal capacity to well over 2m TEU per annum by the year 2026.