A ship takes 24 days to travel the 11.612 nautical miles that separate the ports of Shanghai, in China, and Pecém, in Ceará. Between Santos (SP) and Pecém there are three and a half days of travel to cover 1.776 nautical miles. However, transporting a ton of steel from China to Ceará costs around US$55. While on the route between Santos and Pecém the price is double, US$120. it is not difficult to understand the reasons why Brazilian steel companies, which are mainly in the Southeast, have a small presence in the North and Northeast”, says Carlos Loureiro, president of the National Union of Companies Distributing Steel Products (Sindisider).
The deficiency of the Brazilian logistics infrastructure is pointed out by executives in the sector as one of the main factors reducing the competitiveness of steel companies, with impacts both on the cost of production and on the disposal of steel. “Brazil is a continental country and we don't have enough railroads, many roads are of inadequate quality and cabotage is still underdeveloped in the country”, says Sergio Leite, commercial vice-president of Usiminas.
Usiminas extracts iron ore in Serra Azul (MG) which supplies its plants in Ipatinga (MG) and Cubatão (SP). To get to São Paulo, the transport of both the ore and the steel sheets from Minas uses the railway lines of MRS Logística and VLI. One problem, they have different gauges. “We lost a day just to transfer between one rail network and another”, says Leite. Road transport is also not a better option. Ipatinga is served by the BR 381, which has a single track to Belo Horizonte that only in 2014 became part of the federal government's duplication plans.
The distribution of the steelworks' products is carried out by a network of 19 companies, with their activities concentrated mainly in the South-Southeast axis. The exceptions are the partnership with a distributor in the Amazon and two distribution centers that belong to Usiminas itself, one in Camaçari (BA) and the other in Suape (PE), which respectively serve Ford and Fiat. “Without these units, it would be impossible to work in the just-in-time model adopted by automakers”, says the executive. According to Sergio Leite, logistical costs make the company's products uncompetitive in other North and Northeast states.
The country's logistical deficiencies also lead steelmakers to invest their own capital in infrastructure, resources that could be used in their main business, steel production. Usiminas, for example, holds 25% of the capital of MRS Logística, and two maritime terminals for the outflow of its production and the receipt of imported coal. One terminal is in Cubatão, in the area of influence of the public port of Santos. The other is in Praia Mole, next to the port of Vitória (ES), this one in partnership with Vale and Gerdau.
Jefferson De Paula, CEO of ArcelorMittal Aços Longos, says that logistics costs in Brazil are 35% higher than those incurred in the US branch. “Part of this cost is passed on to customers, generating a loss of competitiveness throughout the production chain. Another part we absorbed, representing lower profitability”, he says.
According to the executive's calculations, the company spends US$ 425 million per year on logistics and could save US$ 130 million if the Brazilian infrastructure had the same standard as the American one. ArcelorMittal Aços Longos has six factories in the Southeast that serve 70 customers in the country and 75% of transport is done by road. There are 120 distribution centers and 26 service units aimed at civil construction. In São Paulo, the company has a hub that concentrates goods and, by 2015, it should invest R$ 60 million in two new hubs, one in the Northeast and another in the Midwest.
Jorge Augusto Doria Nascimento Silva, general manager of the supply chain at Votorantim Siderurgia, says that companies are increasingly investing in planning logistics networks, optimizing the distribution network and technology to control flows. But the effort comes up against bottlenecks in the country's infrastructure. “Votorantim Siderurgia moves almost 3,5 tons of raw materials, inputs and products for each ton sold, logistical costs directly affect our competitiveness”, he says.
The company owns three plants in Brazil, in Barra Mansa (RJ), Resende (RJ) and Três Lagoas (MS), in addition to a unit in Colombia and another in Argentina, which add up to a capacity of 2,5 million tons per year of long steel. Most of the production is shipped by road. At the end of last year, the company started using cabotage to take products from Rio to the North.
For Nascimento Silva, the new concession models that are being adopted for highways and railways and the development of projects in waterways, cabotage and multi-modal terminals will help to unlock the movement of cargo in the country and, with that, reduce logistical costs. . “But we need to speed up this process,” he says. The Logistics Investment Program (PIL), presented in 2012 by the federal government with an investment forecast of R$ 240 billion, has made little progress so far.
Source: Valor Econômico
By: Domingos Zaparolli
