Posted on July 21, 2016
By Rob Ward, JOC.com
Shippers using the container terminals overseen by the Itajai Port Authority are livid with the Brazilian government for failing to provide emergency dredging needed so container lines can fully load their ships.
Although the government has provided funding for the emergency dredging, the 65 million reais ($19.82 million) set aside to restore the terminals’ depth of between 12.8 meters and 13 meters (42 feet and 42.6 feet) at low tide was so low that no dredging outfits even placed a bid for the work.
The situation could be worse though, as an unusually dry spell of weather has helped to protect the flood-prone terminals from being inundated. The terminals had to temporarily close in October because of flooding from heavy rain, the origin of the dredging emergency, and was seriously damaged in a bout of 2008 flooding.
During the October flooding, Helder Barbalho, the ports minister at the time, promised dredging work would proceed, but the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and scrapping of the ports ministry under interim president Michel Temer robbed the effort of momentum. Many say that because of political uncertainty, Minister of Transport Mauricio Quintella Lessa did not get involved enough to push for a successful dredging bid.
The entrance channel to Itajai has lost about 1 meter since the October flooding, and the issue was made worse by the need for repairs to the propulsion system of a ship carrying out maintenance dredging that lasted 20 days to July 13, Heder Cassiano Moritz, the executive director for the Itajai Port Authority told JOC.com. Reports in local newspapers said that the terminals had lost around 2 meters of draft.
“Things were getting very critical during that 20-day period (the dredger was getting repairs),” he told JOC.com. “Luckily for us after the horrible wet season last year, caused by El Niño, this year we have had a dry period and this has led to far less sedimentation for the time of year,” Mortiz said. “Thank God for that, or we would really have been in trouble.”
Itajai will most likely have to wait until after the impeachment process and summer Olympics wrap up before it can get the emergency dredging contract signed, likely in September, Moritz said.
The lack of draft had caused one or two problems at the terminals, but volumes have been low this year, and some of the problems are caused by turning basin restrictions that limit ships to 300 meters in length, a source who works closely with the with one of the terminals told JOC.com. Work has started on expanding the turning basin and once that is completed the basin will be able to handle vessels of up to 330 meters, and if the necessary dredging to 14 meters takes place, the capacity of ships calling the terminals will rise from around 6,000 TEUs to more than 9,000 TEUs.
The current imbroglio is a “complete mess” and “unacceptable status quo” impeding the Brazilian port sector and shippers in the southern states of Santa Catarina and Parana, especially chicken exporters, said one Itajai-based port consultant.
Some of Brazil’s leading chicken exporters rely heavily on Itajai, including JBS Food, Unifrango, Pif-Paf ALimentos, Diplomata and Brasil Foods. The two terminals overseen by the IPA, Portonave and APM Terminals Itajai, handled 66,720 TEUs and 40,660 TEUs of chicken, respectively, in 2015.
Itajai was once the second-biggest container port in Brazil and handled more than 1 million TEUs annually, but since early last year the numbers have been falling as many shippers have left Itajai for Porto Itapoa and Terminal de Conteineres de Paranagua in Parana, which is now Brazil’s second-busiest container port.
Traffic at the terminals in 2015 was down to 983,739 TEU compared with 1.07 million TEUs in 2014. In the first five months of this year Portonave handled 349,318 TEUs while APMT Itajai handled just 78,715 TEUs to the end of May, which is down 51 percent compared with the 161,156 TEUs handled during the same period of 2015.
Source: JOC.com
