BRAZIL: TERMINAL DEVELOPMENT
TCP: GOING FOR HUB STATUS Terminal Conteineres de Paranagua (TCP) is progressively building container volume via innovatively consolidating and expanding its market reach. Rob Ward investigates
8 TCP ranks among the leading container terminals in Brazil for reefer cargo with this playing a prominent part in its expected volume of over one million TEU this year – chicken accounts for around 80 per cent of the 200,000TEU of reefer cargo
Majority owned by China Merchants Port Holdings (CM Port) since September 2017, Terminal Conteineres de Paranagua (TCP) in the southern state of Parana, Brazil, has been growing its container handling year by year, posting a throughput of 983,000TEU during 2020, up 5.3 per cent over 2019. Against this background of positive growth, it has embarked on an ambitious expansion programme which, it says, will increase annual capacity from today’s 2.5mTEU up to 3.5mTEU, and as part of this expansion achieve hub port status. This year so far TCP has handled 740,186TEU during the first eight months which is up around 15 per cent on the 646,630TEU handled during the same period last year. The Parana state terminal now expects to comfortably drive through the 1mTEU per annum barrier for the first time by the end of this year. In fact, the latest forecast, made in midOctober, is that it will smash through the barrier towards the end of November, and end up with 1.1mTEU for 2021. “Last year TCP’s growth in container handling was a 5.3 per cent increase over 2019, and that was three times the increase of most terminals,” says Thomas Lima, Commercial and Institutional Director for the company. And this year the end of year forecast is set at more than 14 per cent, while GDP is expected to rise to just under 5 per cent. Ironically, by the end of September TCP had slipped from third biggest terminal in Brazil (behind Santos Brasil and BTP in Santos) to fourth biggest as Portonave (part of the Itajai
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Port Complex (IPC) and a southern states’ rival for TCP) just edged ahead as a result of its owner, MSC Line, increasing transshipment activity there. CHICKEN EXPORT CAPITAL The main driver of TCP’s success this year has been poultry exports and its almost perennial role as “Chicken Export Capital of the World”, which it occasionally loses to Itajai. Some 185,192TEU of reefer boxes were handled in 2020, of which around 80 per cent is chicken, with pork and beef making up an equal 10 per cent each share of the rest. This year reefers look set to break 200,000TEU for the first time. Another reason for this year’s throughput increase – TCP broke overall monthly records three times by end of September and also for reefer cargoes – has been increased boxes for/from Paraguay and also beef exports from the interior of Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul. Lima says that additional Paraguay boxes and a good percentage of cargo currently shipped to/from Santos – which is in Sao Paulo – could come to Paranagua and 88 per cent of the 1.4m TEU shipped via the Santa Catarina ports. He cites the example of Minerva Foods, which specialises in beef production. “Minerva are mostly operating out of Sao Paulo state and until we put our latest multi modal logistics package together they were exporting 100 per cent out of the port of Santos,”
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