ALL and MRS fight for container business in the port of Santos
Valor Econômico
Every day the port of Santos receives nearly 10 thousand trucks that are responsible for carrying 85% of the 80 million tons of cargo annually handled in its terminals. The greater road concentration is in the road transportation of containers, which has nearly 97% of the volume transported through the Anchieta-Imigrantes system, crossing the Serra do Mar. Today they are 30 million tons, which should get to 84 million within fifteen years, according to a projection of the port itself.
For years, the concentration in the road means of transportation is a reason of concern for the authorities of the port sector, but it now begins being treated as an opportunity. The two biggest railway operators of the country, ALL - América Latina Logística and MRS Logística, have millionaire projects ready to explore the market of transport of containers to Santos. Depending on some adjustments - as the outcome of the project of the railroad ring, which goes around the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo - the two operators may, for the first time, get into a direct dispute for the same cargo.
The bets vary, but it is estimated that the proportion of the containers carried to Santos through the railroads may reach 30% or 40% within the coming years. In 2024, it would mean up to 33 million tons - a promising market, since today it is estimated that 1.1 million tons of cargo is carried on railroads. According to the President of ALL, Bernardo Hees, 40% of the containers of Santos will be carried on railroads within only five years - not necessarily all of it by his company. At the moment, ALL is better positioned to fight for the market: it has the railroad network to carry the cargo from the Interior of the State of São Paulo to Santos practically ready, and it only needs to make a few adjustments to reduce the costs of facilities to transport the cargo. The company estimates at R$ 600 million (US$ 348.8 million) the investment required to build intermodal terminals and carry out a reform in the tunnels downwards to Santos so that they support the "double stack" wagons, a two-floor model of containers it intends to introduce in its railroad.
MRS, on its turn, depends on the future of the railroad ring project to increase its presence in that business. There are currently three possible designs for the railroad ring and each one of them, according to the company, will give a completely different destination to the cargo that crosses the State of São Paulo. The design that interest MRS the best and that will allow its advance in containers is the so-called "segregation". According to the project, the railroad network the company shares with the CPTM - the São Paulo Urban Train Company -, crossing the city of São Paulo, would gain another line to accommodate the cargo trains that currently fight for the use of the rails with the passenger network, which is already saturated.
With the sharing, the capacity of MRS in the railroad network of the capital would go from the current 15 million tons a year to 45 million tons. The company would also complement the investment to pay for part of the public works, creating the required infrastructure to receive the new cargo - the main structure would be a container terminal at a 100 thousand square meter piece of land in the neighborhood of Mooca, on the east side of São Paulo. Another expenditure, calculated at R$ 200 million (US$ 116.3 million), is the improvement of the rack, the descent of Serra do Mar, currently made by 1976 Hitachi locomotives and saturated at the limit of 8 million tons/year. The reform would triple the capacity of the segment.
Besides fighting with trucks for the containers that get to the capital of São Paulo, MRS has plans to install terminals in the interior of the State, in Jundiaí and Campinas. In this case, it would directly dispute with the project of ALL, with the advantage of making a shorter path. According to the estimate of both companies, the Campinas-Santos route by truck is 170 km long. Through the ALL network, the route gets tp 290 km. But, with the segregation, MRS calculates it would travel 190 km.