MRS will have terminal for 1 million containers in Santos
Gazeta Mercantil - 01/28/2008
MRS Logística's Container Terminal in the Port of Santos (SP), named Teval, will become reality this year. According to the company's president Julio Fontana, the construction will begin until August and the exploration will be made by a partner. The Teval will be built on the right bank of the Port of Santos, in the Valongo district, in an area of 140 thousand square meters. According to the executive, the undertaking's capacity will be for up to 1 million TEUs (20-foot containers). Until last year's October, the Port of Santos had activities of 1.723 million TEUs. In Itajaí (SC), the second largest port in container activities in the country, the activity was 390.39 thousand TEUs. "It is an important project that we are concluding, such as the third railway at the entrance of the port of Santos that will become operational now in February", emphasized Fontana. The project of the third railway is an old demand of the railroad operators that work in the Port of Santos. The work was financed by the MRS and used funds in the order of R$ 5 million (US$ 2.8 million). The third railway was a determination of the National Agency of Terrestrial Transports (ANTT) to take away the trains of metric gage that transport cargo to the port from the city of Santos. "The amount of investment is not big, but the importance of the project is enormous since it solves the problem of one of the biggest bottlenecks in railroad transportation in the Port of Santos", he remarked. Besides the investments in the container terminal and in the construction of the third railway in Port of Santos, the MRS is getting ready to transport between 150 million and 160 million tons this year, a growth of 20% over 2007, with activities of 127 million tons. To grow, the company also invests in new signaling technologies that will give more productivity to the permanent railroad. According to Fontana, the equipment is supplied by a consortium that is led by Alstom and the investment will be R$ 15 million (US$ 8.5 million).