Santos also impacted by extreme weather events
The extreme weather phenomena in northern and southern Brazil (see feature article) and its effects on ports in those regions has led to “extreme congestion” at the port of Santos, the biggest port in South America.
Cancellation of services from Santos (serving the huge 20 million plus population of metropolitan Sao Paulo) to Manaus, in the north Amazonas region, has caused a backlog at all the key terminals in Santos. Overflows from Brasil Terminal Portuaria (BTP) and DP World Santos, have led to a log-jam at Santos Brasil, which initially had some spare capacity but then struggled to deal with the extra boxes.
At the same time, the southern port of Itajai saw the Portonave box terminal closed for 17 days due to extreme flooding upriver causing dangerously fast currents and this led to carriers skipping the port and instead offloading at Santos.
Leandro Carelli Barreto, a Director with the Solve Shipping Consultancy, notes that five services from BTP and two from DP World had to make calls at Santos Brasil because the former two could not cope with the extra volume. He adds that this “proves” that Santos needs the STS10 project to go ahead to build “another big box terminal in Santos”.
“Yes, I know the weather extremes have been exceptional this year, but every year we do get some floods and a dry spell in Manaus, so we definitely need STS10 to go ahead to deal with these emergencies when they occur,” argues Barreto.
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