Terminal in Port of Manaus will be expanded

The National Agency for Water Transport (Antaq) authorized the expansion project of the company Super Terminais in the Port of Manaus, after nearly five years of dispute between the company and its main competitor in the location, Chibatão.

Super Terminais is expected to invest around R$150m in the expansion of its private terminal, which handles most of the cargo in Manaus’ Free Zone. The permission has already been published in the Official Gazette and the process should now be sent from the Ministry of Infrastructure for final authorization.

The Chibatão Group, the region’s leading container operator, has prevented the expansion of Super Terminais through several preliminary rulings obtained in court in recent years.

“Considering the kind of conduct that the group has been adopting, we are still awaiting some action on their part [to stop the project],” says company lawyer Bruno Morais.

Chibatão occupies two terminals in Manaus, one of which neighbors Super Terminais on the banks of the Rio Negro. The group has also been calling for an expansion of its operation towards the river, but the process has not yet been approved by Antaq. The complaint is that their plans would be hampered by the competitor’s expansion.

The clash began in late 2014, when Super Terminais, a Di Gregorio family company, filed an order with Antaq to build a floating pier and expand its storage yard. The expansion would be ready within a year and would allow a 20% increase in container handling, estimates director Marcello di Gregorio.

In 2015, the board of the regulatory agency even authorized the project and forwarded the ruling for the federal government’s endorsement. The decision, however, was suspended in the face of questions from the Chibatão group, also a family-owned company, which obtained the right in court to reopen the judicial process with Antaq so that it could speak against it.

Since then, several injunctions have blocked the progress of the venture. For Morais, the company’s lawyer, the competing group has adopted a strategy of creating obstacles to postpone the project.

Although having been sought after, the group Chibatão declined to speak.

Antaq stated that the approval of the project of Super Terminais, despite the request for expansion of Chibatão, is justified due to the degree of maturity of the two processes. “While that of Super Terminais has been formally concluded within this agency since December 2015, Chibatao’s record of interest was not yet ready for full deliberation in April 2019,” it said in a statement.

The following chart, made from DataLiner data, shows the export of containers through the Port of Manaus by the companies Super Terminais and Terminal Chibatão from January 2015 to July 2019:

Chart Source: DataLiner/Datamar
Article Source: Valor

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