Access line to the right bank of the Port of Santos. Photo: Lucas M. Rosa
Started in December last year, the process of creating a new model for the management, operation, maintenance and expansion of the Port of Santos Internal Railway (Fips) should be completed by March 2022. This is the forecast of the Ministry of Infrastructure (Minfra), which is monitoring the progress of the formulation of the new contract, which provides for shared management between rail operators that handle cargo in Latin America’s largest port complex.
Conducted by the Santos Port Authority (SPA) in conjunction with Minfra’s National Secretariat for Ports and Waterway Transport (SNPTA), the modeling of the railroad contract – currently operated by Portofer, leased to Rumo – provides for minimum investments of around R$1.8 billion. This amount, to be apportioned exclusively among the members of the future Special Purpose Company (SPE), should meet the projected increase in demand for rail cargo at the Port of Santos, rising from the current capacity of 55 million tons of cargo per year to around 115 million tons/year over the next five to ten years.
Although the draft contract is for 30 years, according to the SPA, most of the investments will have to be made between 2022 and 2026, in order to avoid bottlenecks with the increase in cargo volume expected with the renewal of railroad contracts. “With the extensions, the additional volume of cargo accessing the port is expected to be dammed up by the lack of capacity in the internal network,” says Diogo Piloni, National Secretary for Ports and Waterway Transportation (SNPTA).
In 2020, the Port of Santos handled 146.6 million tons of cargo, of which 49.7 million tons were transported by rail. Of this figure, 39.5 million tons were transported by Portofer’s 100 km of lines (the rest is made up of cargo disembarking at terminals located around the port). Of the total by rail, 30.7 million tons came from Rumo, 5.8 million from MRS and 3 million from VLI – the three concessionaires that access the port’s internal network. The data is from SPA.
More details about what is planned for the new management of Fips, the discussions and investments in Ferradura de Santos, the MRS line that gives access to the Port of Santos, and the points made by the players involved in the process, will be in the cover story of the next edition of Revista Ferroviária, soon to be published.
Source: Revista Ferroviária
