CSAV increases 50% offer of container ships in the country
Valor Econômico
The Chilean shipowner CSAV is bringing a new fleet of 12 container ships that will increase in nearly 50% its current offer in the operations between Asia and the East Coast of Latin America. The 6,500 TEUs will replace the current, of 4,500 TEUs, till the end of the year. The first, Maipo, was at the port of Santos (SP) earlier this week. It docked at the pier of the Libra terminal to handle 1,924 TEUs. It was a record of productivity of the facility, with 105.8 operations per hour. The next vessels of CSAV to come to the Brazilian waters are the Mataquito and Pangal. Each one has, on average, 1.2 thousand mains for refrigerated containers, mainly used for the storage of the Brazilian chicken exported to Asian countries. "Asia is the trade with the greatest volume of cargo and it will continue growing this year, probably at two-digit rates. The intention is to carry out the total upgrade of the fleet throughout this year", said the Vice President of Operations of the CSAV group of the East Coast of South America, David Giacomini.
According to the Executive, besides the resumption in the volumes of foreign trade, there is another aspect that motivated CSAV to make the investment, whose value has not been revealed. Financial and environmental sustainability. "Larger ships allow more cost efficiency per TEU and less fuel consumption. It is a good marriage between financial and environmental balance". The rotation with weekly frequency on the East Coast will be: Santos, Rio Grande (RS), Montevideo (Uruguay), Paranaguá (Paraná), Santos, Sao Francisco do Sul (SC), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Montevideo, heading to Singapore. CSAV is constructing another class of vessels of 8 thousand TEUs which, according to market information not confirmed by Giacomini, should replace the 6.5 thousand TEUs family as of 2012.