Big investments scheduled

The Intermodal South America conference and trade show 2024, held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, broke all attendance records, with more than 44,000 participants. Held over the three days in March it was a buzzing venue with big-hitters out in force.

Brazil’s Transport Minister Renan Filho, led the way, but he was closely followed by Ports and Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho and Tarcisio De Freitas, the Governor of the State of Sao Paulo, who carries extra clout as he was formerly the Ports Minister during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (January 2019 to 2023). He is said to have a long-lasting influence over affairs in South America’s largest port of Santos.

This triumvirate of heavyweight politicians were united in calling for improvements in Brazil’s under-funded and inadequate infrastructure and all of them – despite political differences between De Freitas and the Brasilia based duo – seemed confident that billions of dollars will be forthcoming for the much-needed investments in infrastructure.

In fact, a total of Reais21 billion (US$4.14 billion) has been earmarked to be spent on projects for the port of Santos alone over the next four years, with some Reais6 billion of that going on a tunnel to connect the right and left banks of the Port of Santos, to give improved connectivity for South America’s largest port. There is also Reais1.4 billion set aside for a new passenger terminal in Valongo, on the site of the Ecoporto port terminal, which will move to Saboo.

Much of the remainder will go on road and rail improvements, including Reais1BN on rail that will boost capacity from 50 million to 115 million tons per annum. Also, very good news for the port community is the Reais324.1 million promised for the deepening of the navigation channel down to 16 metres over the next five years.

“This dredging is absolutely key for Santos if it is become an ECSA hub and accommodate the biggest vessels coming to South America,” said Leandro Carelli Barreto, of Solve Consultancy, who attended the IM show.

De Freitas was equally effusive regarding the need for improved infrastructure and logistics:

“This fair is the biggest of all time and brings opportunities to connect supply and demand, connect with service providers, and talk about intelligent transport systems, at an extremely interesting moment for Brazil,” he enthused. “Ultimately, we can make giant leaps with investments, both public and private, in infrastructure, and especially in Santos.”

And Renan Filho agrees: “ Brazil has achieved significant growth, both in public and private investments, which helps our economy because it generates employment in the short term and boosts the competitiveness of the entire economy,” he emphasised

INTERLOG SUMMIT
As part of IM, the Interlog Summit staged a key debate: Strategic connections: Agribusiness logistics, which highlighted logistic problems suffered by one of Brazil’s key exporting sectors, one which is responsible for 49% of the country’s 2023 US$98 billion trade surplus.

“In many ways Brazil’s biggest competitor is actually ourselves, internally. And the secret to overcoming this and not having bottlenecks is an adequate infrastructure network for grain production,” said Eudis Furtado Filho, a director of railroad company Rumo.

But not everyone is entirely happy with the way things are panning out in Santos, which is responsible for around 31% of all Brazil’s foreign trade, and some say could face a capacity crunch in the near future.

Patricio Junior, Director of investments for Terminal Investment Limited, the stevedoring arm of MSC, which has a 50% stake in BTP, notes: “The Intermodal Show has been a great success and I have never seen so many people attending. However, I do believe that we will face some infrastructure problems due to bottlenecks in Brazilian ports caused by a lack of capacity, so I hope that the government will rethink the STS10 Project.”

STS10 was scrapped when Lula came to power early last year.