Santos Brasil buys new STS cranes, forklifts for Santos terminal

Santos Brasil announced the purchase of two state-of-art Ship-to-Shore cranes and two empty container forklifts. These pieces of equipment are worth BRL 130 million.

They are part of the second expansion phase of Tecon Santos’ modernization project, which foresees investments of BRL 540 million to increase capacity to 2.6 million TEUs/year. These are the first of a series of equipment purchases that Santos Brasil should complete this year.

The new STS cranes, also known as portainers, acquired from the Chinese company ZPMC, are 50 meters high and 70 meters in length from the boom, capacity to handle up to two full 20-foot containers at the same time and up to 100 tons of cargo. These structures will be added to the eight ZPMC-bought equipment already employed at the Santos container terminal, making it ten.

Like the other portainers currently operating at the terminal, these will also feature OCR (optical character recognition) technology to identify the number of containers, adding safety, speed, and precision to the operation. In addition, similar to the two cranes received in 2020, they will employ TPS (Truck Position System) technology, which precisely spots the vehicles used in loading and unloading operations.

The two new empty container forklifts purchased are manufactured by Kalmar and have a capacity of nine tonnes each. The acquisition increases from six to eight the number of such forklifts at Tecon Santos, increasing the capacity both for ship-loading and for the flow of trucks that move containers in and out of the terminal.

The STS cranes are expected to be delivered in October 2023, and the forklifts in November this year.

According to Antonio Carlos Sepúlveda, CEO of Santos Brasil, the company is also eying models of mobile electric cranes (e-RTGs), terminal tractors, and forklifts. “All this, together with the yard remodeling, the elevation of the warehouse ceiling height, and the use of a lot of artificial intelligence, will significantly increase our capacity, ensuring that the Port of Santos stays ahead of demand,” he says.

The first phase of the Tecon Santos expansion and modernization project was officially delivered in December last year. In the third phase, the company will invest another BRL 600 million by 2031 to bring the terminal capacity to 3 million TEUs per year, thus completing the investments of BRL 1.55 billion foreseen in the terminal’s extension contract.

The project is in line with the goals for reducing environmental impacts defined by the company for 2024, which establish a 50% reduction in waste/TEU generation, a 30% reduction in per capita water consumption, and a 15% reduction in tons of carbon dioxide emissions per TEU.

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