Ports and Terminals

Port of Santos breaks historical record

Nov, 25, 2019 Posted by Sylvia Schandert

Week 201948

The Port of Santos reached an operating record in October by moving 12.79m tons, surpassing by 0.3% the best previous monthly mark that happened in July this year, and surpassing by 24.7% the volume sold in October 2018. It contributed to the unprecedented increase in the number of moorings in the period, which exceeded all expectations for the month: 46 vessels more than the same month in 2018, up 12.1% to 426 vessels in the period.

This was only possible because SPA (Codesp’s new name) has made efforts to enable the use of berths in the Saboó and Outeirinhos quays, aiming to increase the port dynamics. In the specific case of Saboó, an update was made on the current zoning that allowed the operation of fertilizers without restrictions. With regard to Outeirinhos, a deal between the Navy and the SPA has allowed the section under management of the Maritime Authority to be commercially operationalized for the first time on 10/21/2019 since the opening of that pier in 2016. These two initiatives have resulted in considerable increased productivity, which reduced the waiting queue of ships.

As a consequence, the monthly average of ships waiting in Barra for berth availability dropped from 70 in the first half to approximately 55 in recent months.

Shipments also went up: bulk maize (totaling 2.21m tons, +47.8%); bulk soybeans (759,741 tons, +107.2%); soybean meal (568,293 tons, +54.3%). The 365,875-ton increase in fertilizer landings (762,150 tons, +92.3%) also contributed significantly to the historical result.

Containerized cargo performance increased by 4.9% in the month to 383,244 TEU.

In the first ten months of the year, the movement also increased, reaching 112.77m tons, 1.9% higher than in the same period last year.

The high was strongly influenced by the increase in accumulated shipments of corn (totaling 13.32m tons, +59.0%), pulp (totaling 4.04m tons, +7.2%), fertilizer discharges (totaling 4.55m tons, +38.8%), and gas diesel and diesel oil (totaling 2.05m tons, +30.8%).