Shipowners face difficulties

Source: Valor Econômico

Shipowners operating in the country continue to face serious operating difficulties, despite the increase in public investment in ports in recent years. Shipping companies lost 67,1 hours in delays in the berthing and unberthing of their ships in the first nine months of last year, up 3,3% over the last data available for the same period of time, in 2010.

With the worsening of the situation, the average waiting time per scale rose 27,5% on the same basis of comparison – from 14,9 hours to 19 hours. The data are from the National Navigation Center (Centronave), which brings together container and general cargo shipowners. More important than the increase is the fact that the numbers remain at high levels. “Completely out of the curve”, says the executive director of Centronave, Claudio Loureiro.

The association calculates an accumulation of losses of US$ 127 million, a figure that involves the daily cost of ships and the rent of containers, among others. “It is not possible for the country to submit to delays and additional costs of this order without suffering foreign trade. And it suffers in many ways, with higher operating costs,” he says.

The problem focused on delays in docking, responsible for 81% of the 67,1 hours lost. The record holders were: Santos (SP), Itajaí (SC), Paranaguá (PR), Sepetiba and Rio de Janeiro (RJ), responsible, together, for 82% of delays in dockings.

The reasons given by Centronave vary from port to port, but depth restrictions are recurrent, as well as bad weather in the South. In Santos, there were structural and occasional problems in 2013. In the first case, the lack of adequate depth of the berths and congestion in land accesses weighed, says the association. There was also a temporary restriction on the use of some of the few berths able to receive large ships. Rio de Janeiro and Itajaí also had difficulties due to draft limitations.

“The dredging, in general, did not have the expected results. At the same time, the agricultural harvest is increasing and the land infrastructure remains the same”, says Miguel Malaguerra, director of the Grimaldi shipowner.

Without being able to call Santos, some companies decided to go to other ports, but which were also unable to receive additional volumes. “The system collapsed,” says an executive at a company that missed 25% of its scheduled stopovers. Usually the index is 5%.

The result of deepening the Santos channel, contracted by the Secretariat of Ports (SEP), also created limitations to navigation. To deepen the channel, it was necessary to reduce the width of a curve, which made it difficult for large vessels to maneuver. At the same time, the benefits of deepening lasted only seven months: the operational draft, increased by almost one meter in 2013, was recently lowered due to silting.

SEP says it has not paid and will not pay for services not performed. And that if contractual default is verified, it may unilaterally terminate the contract. The folder is about to launch a tender to correct the layout of Santos and maintain the originally contracted depth of 15 meters. Until 2013, the number of ships over 300 meters in length that came to Brazil was around 5% of the fleet employed in the country. Starting this year, the share will be 25%, says José Roberto Salgado, operations manager at Hamburg Süd.

“The number of containers will grow a lot. And there are still restrictions. Ships over 330 meters cannot maneuver at night,” she says. SEP did not comment on delays at ports.