Posted on August 15, 2017
By Rob Ward, JOC.com
The draft at Santos, the largest container port in Brazil, is now 13 meters following the resumption of emergency dredging to put an end to draft restrictions that cost shippers and carriers millions of dollars.
The 13-meter draft is an improvement on the previous depth of 12.6 meters, but still shy of the original draft of 13.2 meters, which the Santos port authority Codesp says should be restored by the end of August.
“Now Dragabras, [the dredging company hired by Codesp for the emergency dredging] is continuing to dredge so we should shortly see further positive results,” said Alberto José Pinheiro de Carvalho, the commander of the São Paulo Port Captain’s department. “Hopefully … the draft can be restored to the previous level by the end of the month.”
Carvalho has been pushing for Codesp to carry out draft measurements more regularly because it would enable the official draft to be upgraded more speedily, which would help reduce losses for the shipping community by enabling authorities to take necessary action in a more timely manner. Codesp said that would begin to take such measurements every month.
The restrictions have cost shipowners using Santos 109 million reais ($34.48 million) every week, according to Centronave, the Brazilian association for foreign flag shipowners.
Although the emergency dredging has made progress, dredging 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) farther up the river in the Cubatao port area was suspended for environmental reasons. The area is used mostly for steel products, as well as grain and sugar shipments.
That suspension combined with the recent legal dispute over the emergency dredging underscores the persistent problems with how dredging operations are handled at the port, where traffic declined 4.8 percent to 3.6 million TEU last year. Traffic in the first half is up 4.5 percent to 1.8 million TEU.
Source: JOC.com
