Posted on July 25, 2017
By Rob Ward, JOC.com
The key Brazilian port of Santos’ efforts to bounce back from draft restrictions were set back this week after heavy weather and flooding forced the port to close for most of a working day and an urgently needed dredging contract was threatened by political wrangling.
Waves of 3.88 meters battered the port on Tuesday and the ensuing 10-hour closure kept 11 vessels from departing and 16 from berthing, of those affected, 15 were container ships, according to a manager at Codesp, the Santos port authority. Four of the 16 that were unable to berth proceeded to their next port of call.
“We have taken another hit this week, but we are resilient,” said Jose Roque, executive director of the Santos and Sao Paulo Ship agents’ association (Sindamar). “We carry on but the situation regarding draft has got worse, because the high waves have brought with them more sediment and more silting up so it will take longer to get the draft back to where it was a month ago.”
Santos port pilots reduced the official maximum draft from 13.2 meters (43.3 feet) to 12.3 meters at the start of the month, and there has been only marginal improvement from emergency dredging at the port that handled 3.7 million TEU last year.
“Up to July 14, more than 10,000 containers were either not shipped or were rolled due to draft restrictions, and we estimate total ship owners’ losses with respect to the maritime freight that was not shipped on time has reached $23 million,” said Roque.
Sindamar estimates that for every day a vessel is not operating, ship owners lose between $10,000 and $75,000 per day depending on the size and type of ship, so an extra $1 million was lost on Tuesday. Meanwhile, millions of dollars every week are also being lost because the draft restrictions force box ships to Santos with between 100 TEU and 200 TEU less than usual. The average vessel calling Santos is now around 8,000 TEU, so if only 100 boxes are rolled with an average freight rate of more than $1,500, that results in losses of over $1 million per voyage, Sindamar says.
Port sources say that operations were back to normal Wednesday, but dredging efforts are now surrounded by uncertainty because of an arcane and complicated legal dispute between Codesp and dredging companies Boskalis, Van Oord, and Dratec Engineering.
“At the moment there is no forecast of the return of the draft of 13.2meters although the dredger is working in the entrance channel, right now,” Roque said.
“The port of Santos cannot be without such an important service [dredging] while bureaucratic and court matters are resolved, given its importance in the Brazilian port network,” Codesp said in a statement.
Source: JOC
