Brazil is one of the most promising emerging markets in the world, as BRICS recent results showed. A high degree of diversification in its product exportation base, a diversified list of trading partners, internal economic stability, increasingly large work force are helping to attract more and more global investors.
Brazil accounts for more than half of the South American economy, and is responsible for more than 2% of the world’s GDP.
Updating Brazil’s outdated infrastructure was the key driver for the 2011-2015 Growth Acceleration Programme, valued at USD 526bn, with projections for a further USD 346bn to follow. Over 10% was allocated to transportation projects including port development. Brazil has a coastline of 8,500km running from north of the equator to below the 30th parallel in the south. In 2012, there were 37 public ports (including both seaports and river ports) and 128 private terminals.
Several of these ports are undergoing development and infrastructure modernisation projects.
Embraport, the port terminal in Santos, is planning to open until the end of the first semester of 2015 two expansion works worth R$ 50 million (almost US$ 19 million): a branch railway line and a bonded warehouse. According to information released by the press agency overseeing the development, the company wants to become a complete logistics services provider. The terminal partners with the port operator DP World, from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the Brazilian company Odebrecht.
The train terminal will take up an area of 20 thousand square meters and the branch in itself will measure 850 meters in length. The line will have double gauge, that is, it will be able to work with trains of different gauges, with trains up to 200 TEUs (cargo capacity unit that amounts to the volume of a twenty-foot long intermodal container). With this railway building project, the idea is to offer a new transport alternative to the clients. According to Embraport, Santos port moves just 2% of its container cargo through railway, but with the new structure this percentage could reach 5%.
The Embraport terminal went into operation in July 2013 and has a cargo handling capacity of 1.2 million TEUs. However, the company might close 2014 having handled only half of its capacity. The development operates container and non-container loads. For the company, it’s hard to predict how much the volume of operations will be in 2015, “once that the economy is still stabilizing, especially in the first semester”. “Nevertheless, we are expecting a gradual improvement as consequence of the foreign trade improvement”, says the company.
by Elena Ilie
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