MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Spanish vessels arrival boosts port of Montevideo.

Around 15 vessels from Spain will arrive before the end of the year and are expected to make Montevideo's port activity more dynamic, generate hundreds of jobs, and yield around USD 300,000 per vessel for the country.

These vessels will join around 20 Korean tuna vessels that have been docked at port for a few months.

The vessel José A. Nores is arriving 29 November with 940 tonnes of hake, pollock, squid, codling, and skate to be landed onto 32 refrigerated containers belonging to the maritime agency Tranship Uruguay SA, the company's director, Enrique Cossaro, told the newspaper El País from Montevideo. The vessel Costa do Cabo is to follow it with 626 tonnes of catches.

On 6 December, the vessel Patricia Nores will be arriving Montevideo with 805 tonnes followed by the Beatriz Nores and the Playa de Galicia, with 600 and 450 tonnes, respectively.

Later, the vessel Playa Pez Mar Uno will reach the port carrying 1,020 tonnes and, finally, on 20 December the Playa Pez Mar Dos will get to port with similar catches.

A total 4,900 tonnes will be landed onto 160 refrigerated containers, which will require hiring more than 100 dockers and the ports of Vigo, Spain and Klaipeda, Lithuania will be the goods destines.

Once the landing operations are completed, the vessels will remain at Montevideo's port in order to be inspected, painted, and repaired.

Manuel Barros, director of another maritime agency operating a fleet of 100 vessels ?most of which are Spanish-, told El País that his company will also receive eight large vessels between the end of November and mid-December.

These vessels will land 5,600 tonnes of catches into 190 containers which will be shipped in regular vessels towards their corresponding destines although most of them will be landed in the Spanish port of Vigo.

Each vessel will yield around USD 300,000 for the country, generated from landing expenses from catches, repairs, and the restocking of provisions.

Barros pointed out that the high fuel value makes it impossible for the vessels to go back to their countries of origin and thus Montevideo has become an inevitable nexus between the fishery grounds in the South Atlantic and Spain.

"A round trip for one of these vessels to Vigo is USD 140,000 in fuel and it demands 30 days, so they opted to send crews by plane. It is cheaper, quicker and they save 30 days of navigation of life onboard," said the Uruguayan businessman.

Source FIS