São Paulo – Embraport, the port terminal in Santos, is planning to open until the end of the first semester of 2015 two expansion works worth R$ 50 million (almost US$ 19 million): a branch railway line and a bonded warehouse. According to information released by the press agency overseeing the development, the company wants to become a complete logistics services provider. The terminal has as its partners the port operator DP World, from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the Brazilian company Odebrecht.
The press agency says that the train terminal will take up an area of 20 thousand square meters and the branch in itself will measure 850 meters in length. The line will have double gauge, that is, it will be able to work with trains of different gauges, with trains up to 200 TEUs (cargo capacity unit that amounts to the volume of a twenty-foot long intermodal container).
With this railway building project, the idea is to offer a new transport alternative to the clients. According to Embraport, Santos port moves just 2% of its container cargo through railway, but with the new structure this percentage could reach 5%.
The warehouse will measure five thousand square meters and will offer all container-related services. The company doesn’t want to limit itself to only a cargo transport.
The Embraport terminal went into operation in July 2013 and has a cargo handling capacity of 1.2 million TEUs. However, the company might close 2014 having handled only half of its capacity. The development operates container and non-container loads.
For the company, it’s hard to predict how much the volume of operations will be in 2015, “once that the economy is still stabilizing, especially in the first semester”. “Nevertheless, we are expecting a gradual improvement as consequence of the foreign trade improvement”, says the company.
Embraport receives three cabotage lines that go through the Brazilian coast, Uruguay and Argentina, and one that attend to the Middle East.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
