Minasul uses ‘big bags’ to overcome logistical bottleneck and sees the best January in its coffee export history

The Minasul cooperative saw another coffee export record in January. According to data released this Wednesday, February 2nd, the more than 40,000 bags shipped in the month made it the best since Minasul entered the export market in 2015.

According to Héberson Vilas Boas, a trader at Minasul, such a positive outcome was only possible because the company opted to use the “break bulk” system to avoid the logistical impasses that continue to continue plague the entire sector.

The final destination of the Brazilian coffee sacks shipped abroad was the United States, Brazil’s most prominent coffee trading partner. The region’s logistical challenges began with the pandemic, and, as a result, Minasul now has cargo sitting on ships for eight months. According to Héberson, the size of the load might be small, but problems are far from over.

Knowing that this is a global crisis that depends more on external factors than on Brazil’s exporters to be solved, importers began to offer alternatives. Minasul coffee, for example, was transported alongside cargo from five other exporters. “Approximately half of the 40 thousand sacks were shipped in big bags. Without this operation, we would not have seen a record in January,” Héberson explains.

He also mentions that the prices to conduct the operation did not increase though security issues did. “In a way, containers protect the load, while the big bags offer greater damage risk. Therefore, I believe that this is an efficient solution in the short term while the logistical chaos continues.” The cooperative believes that new shipments will be made with big bags in the coming months.

When it comes to returning to normalcy, Héberson says that the situation remains uncertain. For example, when comparing current shipments to October and November 2021, Minasul’s data points out that the situation has improved by 30%, even though significant improvements are only expected for the second semester. The cooperative exports 500,000 bags per year on average.

In addition to the global crisis, the United States faces a shortage of workers in the logistics market. Without operators to facilitate landings, Brazilian coffee delivery abroad stagnates. But, according to Eduardo Heron, technical director of the Council of Coffee Exporters of Brazil (Cecafé), the sector observes a slight improvement there in relation to last month.

“The American west coast is still congested, though not in the proportion we saw in December when 100 vessels were waiting to either unload or load”, he says. Last year, Brazil stopped exporting approximately 3 million bags and received about US$ 465 million in revenue.

Source: Notícias Agrícolas

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