One issue that was high on the agenda of attendees at the Intermodal show was future ownership of container terminals at the Port of Santos, South America’s biggest port with 4.99 million TEU handled last year (38 per cent of Brazil’s total 12.6M TEU in 2022).
Speculation that MSC might step in and buy Santos Brasil – which last year handled 1.989 million TEU, making up 39.3 per cent of Santos’s 4.99M TEU - was the most widespread of the “rumors with substance.”
Robert Grantham, a director with the Solve Shipping agency, said that this was a turnaround given that speculation just a few years ago was that Maersk Line would buy into the Brazilian- owned terminal, as most of their boxed throughput, around 70 per cent of it, went there.
Santos Brasil, a listed company (on Bovespa, the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange) had to step in and make a statement to Bovespa that no contract offer had been made to key shareholder Opportunity, a Rio based private equity firm, but Santos Brasil would keep the market “informed about material events that may ‘influence the quotation’ ”. MSC has consistently refused to comment on the subject.
“There has been a lot of talk about this and I guess the announcement by Maersk and MSC that they will fold up the 2M alliance will also lead to a parting of the ways on the joint BTP project in Santos,” Grantham told Port strategy, after attending the trade conference. BTP has a 38.5 per cent share of Santos containerised throughput and 70 per cent of the movement is with MSC vessels!
