WASHINGTON: The ports of Salvador and Suape are battling it out for Brazilian fruit exports, and the lower terminal handling charges of Salvador have given it an edge with shippers. Many containerized fruit imports originate in the state of Pernambuco, making them a natural fit for Suape, which is also in the state. However, the lower THCs on offer at Salvador have made it more attractive for Pernambuco shippers, which typically avoided Salvador because of the extra tariffs they would have had to pay by crossing the state border into Bahia from Pernambuco. This has resulted in nearly identical traffic gains and losses between the two ports.
Container traffic at Salvador has increased 6.9 percent year-over-year through the first eight months of 2016 to 197,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units, driven largely by fruit shipments. That 13,000-TEU gain mirrors the 15,000-TEU loss at Suape through the first eight months to 257,000 TEUs.
Much of Salvador’s gains came from shippers of grapes and mangoes, who were also drawn to the port because of its 34 deep-sea calls and 16 cabotage calls per month. The majority of Salvador’s fruit exports end up in the United States and Europe. Suape has 10 deep-sea calls. Mango shipments jumped 23 percent year-over-year for the period to 2,292 TEUs, and grape exports were up 21 percent to 2,066 TEUs, according to Guilherme Nogueira Dutra, a commercial manager at Tecon Salvador.
Despite a struggling economy, Salvador has been having a good year, according to Demir Lourenco, the CEO of Tecon Salvador, who also scotched rumors Tecon Salvador was among four terminals about to be granted a 25-year concession extension by the Brazilian Ministry of Transport. “We are not within a week of the extension being granted, as we are still negotiating the details,” Lourenco told JOC.com. “You have to remember that Brazil is a very bureaucratic country and these things take time.”
Salvador’s expansion plan was first put forward two years and has already been approved by the Salvador port authority and Antaq, the government regulatory body for ports and waterways, he said. The expansion also had the approval of the the ports ministry, which was recently subsumed under the Ministry of Transport. The port and ministry of transport are now negotiating the final details, Lourenco said.
The concession would pave the way for a 352.6-million-reais expansion ($110.4 million) that will expand Salvador’s quay 150 meters to 800 meters, allowing the port to handle two mega-ships with capacities of up to 10,000 TEUs simultaneously. The port will also add to its fleet of six ship-to-shore gantry cranes and eight rubber-tire gantry cranes. All this work would increase Salvador’s annual capacity from 530,000 TEUs to 950,000 TEUs, Lourenco said. The port handled 292,000 TEUs last year, a 2 percent year-over-year increase.
