More competitive, coastal shipping grows and attracts even multinationals
Valor Econômico
After the decline in the 80s, the domestic navigation is again a viable option for businesses that carry large volumes and they bet on the logistics rationalization. The migration to the ship of cargo previously carried by trucks is based on the cost, environmental efficiency and cargo integrity tripod - which suffers less damage on the sea than on the roads. Due to the rise of new Brazilian consumers, the challenges are now to increase the offer of vessels and improve the port infrastructure.
"The potential to use coastal shipping is huge, and it depends on the availability of the operators to invest in more lines", says the Director of logistics of the internal market of Brasil Foods, Darlan Carvalho. Today, the food giant transports by ship only 4% of the 2.5 million tons it operates in the domestic market every year. Should there be more capacity in the sea routes, that rate would surely increase, says Carvalho.
Foreign ocean navigation companies established subsidiaries and Brazilian companies entered the business. The fleet of container ships operating dedicated to coastal shipping with regular frequency on the coast amounts to 20 vessels (eight of Aliança; seven of Log-In; three of Mercosul Line; and two of Maestra, newly created company). And most of them plan an increase for this year. Maestra will feature another two units this half; Aliança will reactivate two ships that were stopped in 2009 and 2010, due to the effects of the global crisis; and Log-In executing a R$ 1.3 billion (US$ 812.5 million) plan for the renewal of the fleet that foresees larger vessels to replace the current ones. Two of them arrive until September. Established in 2007, the company has seen annual growth of 28% in the volumes since then.
A study ordered by the company points out that for each container carried in the domestic navigation there is room for another three to be captured. Today, they are mainly on the road, which responds for 60% of the transport matrix, but it is considered less competitive in the long distance. The criteria used to establish what goods have the coastal shipping profile are: nature of the cargo and distance between the ports of origin and destination. Therefore, the universe that could have been loaded on ships last year amounted to 1.5 million TEUs, but the shipping industry handled 348 thousand TEUs. In other words, 1.1 million TEUs arrived or left the ports in a less appropriate way. The estimate is that a truck emits up to four times more CO2 than a ship to carry a ton per kilometer travelled.