Brazil starts construction of Latin America's largest container terminal
Porto Central, the largest port complex under construction on the east coast of South America, recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Praxys, an internationally renowned business consulting firm. The two parties will jointly build one of the largest container terminals in Latin America. The implementation of this project will effectively fill the gap in deep-water port infrastructure on the east coast of South America and significantly enhance Brazil's hub status in the global shipping network.
The project site is located in President Kennedy City, Espirito Santo State, southeastern Brazil, in the center of the country's east coastline, only 200 nautical miles from Rio de Janeiro. The project is developed in two phases. The water depth of the first phase is 18 meters, and the second phase will be expanded to 20 meters, becoming the first modern terminal in South America with a 20-meter deep-water berth. This core advantage enables it to accommodate ultra-large container ships of 21,000 to 24,000 standard containers (TEUs) to berth, providing a strategic fulcrum for major trade routes such as Asia-South America and Europe-South America.
According to the plan, the first phase of the project will build a berth with a shoreline of 1,370 meters. It is expected that the annual throughput will reach 2.5 million TEUs after it is put into operation in 2030. With the development of subsequent stages, the final total handling capacity will be increased to 6 million TEUs, which will become an important infrastructure for Brazil to participate in global trade competition. The project also plans to build a supporting railway network to achieve seamless connection with inland areas such as Minas Gerais (MG), especially to strengthen the logistics channels of economic centers such as Belo Horizonte.
In addition, the completion of the deep-water port can reduce logistics costs by about 30% through large-scale operations on the one hand, and optimize the regional distribution system of Asian and European goods on the other hand, and provide efficient transit services for neighboring countries such as Argentina and Uruguay. It is estimated that after the full operation of the project, the comprehensive competitiveness index of Brazilian ports can be increased by 15%-20%.
It is understood that the Prasace Group, with its deep accumulation in the maritime field, will lead the construction of the project's commercial operation system. The group specially appointed Jesper Kjaedegaard, a shipping industry leader, as chief consultant. This former Maersk shipping executive has more than 40 years of experience in the container logistics industry and has led the planning and construction of several international hub ports.
"This epoch-making project will completely change the shipping pattern on the east coast of South America." Kjaedegaard emphasized at the signing ceremony, "It will not only attract more intercontinental direct routes to berth, but more importantly, it will reconstruct the regional supply chain system, saving Brazilian exporters an average of 18-22% of logistics costs, and creating more than 12,000 direct jobs in Espirito Santo."
Market analysis points out that with the acceleration of the global trend of large-scale ships (the average container capacity of newly built container ships has reached 16,000TEU), after the completion of this project, Brazil will have the ability to berth the world's largest container ships for the first time, and it is expected to shorten the country's shipping time to major Asian trade ports by 5-7 days. Officials from the Brazilian Ministry of Transport revealed that the port has been included in the priority project list of the National Logistics Development Plan (PNL 2035), and related supporting infrastructure will receive special federal financial support.
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