STI Invests to Consolidate and Expand Box Volume

In January of this year it installed two new Ship to Shore Super Post Panamax cranes, replacing the Paceco models that had operated there for the past 25 years, and bringing its capacity up to 1.6m TEU/yr, a 27% increase on the previous maximum. In addition, Rodrigo Galleguillos, General Manager, STI notes that over the past year, it has added two more Rubber Tyred Gantries (RTGs), 19 reach-stackers and a fleet of terminal tractors. Overall investment during this phase is in the order of US$66m.

In 2023 STI handled 1.014m TEU, which was a decrease of 7.25%, compared to the 1.093m TEU handled in 2022, and more than 17.7% less than the 1.233m TEU throughput of 2021. The good news is that first four months of this year have started impressively with 393,366TEU handled, up 30% compared to same period of 2023.

San Antonio as a whole, including the multipurpose DP World terminal, handled 1.58m TEU in 2023, which was down by 6.4% compared to 2022, and down 7.7% in relation to 2019, when it handled 1.7m TEU. The 2023 figure was still sufficient to see San Antonio ranked ninth in all Latin America, although it was ranked 7^th five years ago.

Valparaiso, which used to be the No.1 box port in Chile, handled just 785,000TEU last year, and that’s a reduction of 13.2% from the 905,000TEU throughput of 2019.

“The arrival of the new STSs means we can now handle two Neo Post Panamax vessels simultaneously, the first terminal in the country to do so,” underlines Galleguillos. He adds that STI has also planned for the new fruit export season by spending an additional US$15m on 27 new reefer towers. STI already has 2,700 reefer plugs in situ.