Santos approved to receive 366 meter vessels

On Tuesday, February 23, the Port of Santos was approved by the Brazilian Navy to host vessels of up to 366 meters in length – the largest vessels planned to visit the East Coast of South America.

This authorization further strengthens the port’s position as a hub port in South America. With almost 30% of the national trade chain, the Santos port complex is preparing for further growth in container movements resulting from the planned expansions, including two new areas in Saboó, on the right bank. In addition, BR do Mar, a Minfra project to encourage cabotage, should benefit the port as a cargo hub. Even without including BR do Mar, the expected growth is 3.3% per year for this type of cargo, with projections being of growth from 4.4 million TEU today, to 7.9 million by 2040, as outlined by the Development Plan and Zoning (PDZ) project for the Port of Santos, approved last year.

Today the Port of Santos receives vessels up to 340 meters long, which have a 9,000 TEU capacity. With the new approval for larger vessels, vessel capacity will increase to a maximum of 14,000 TEU. SPA, in a process that also involved the Pilotage of São Paulo and the University of São Paulo (USP), studied and performed simulations of maneuverability, hydrodynamic interaction, and mooring plans, before these vessels were approved to navigate the channel. Brasil Terminal Portuário (BTP), DP World, and Santos Brasil each carried out a study on the maneuverability and viability of arrival of vessels of this size at their terminals and delivered them to the SPA, which consolidated the work, submitting it for analysis of the Port Authority of São Paulo and the Directorate of Ports and Coasts (DPC) of the Brazilian Navy.

SPA’s monitoring of the market shows that container handling has been increasing steadily over the years. There was a one-off decrease in the first half of last year, with recovery starting in July, which reached a monthly record in December. This year has begun with a record already set in January and expectations are that growth will be even greater, with the authorization of the arrival of 366 meters vessels.

The chart below shows the volume of containers handled by the Port of Santos since 2019:

Port of Santos container handling | Jan 2019 to Dec 2020 | TEU

Graph source: DataLiner (To request a DataLiner demo click here)

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