MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Right moment for Montevideo port to become regional hub

Brazliean ports make Hamburg-Sud General Manager Rigby job very exhausting

The recurrent conflicts in Brazilian ports are having a direct impact on River Plate maritime traffic but the situation could be overcome if Montevideo expands its facilities and becomes a hub for the region, according to maritime agents.

"The port of Montevideo is suffering seriously the irregular situation of Brazilian ports" according to Jimmy Rigby, General Manager of Hamburg-Sud office in the Uruguayan capital. In the last twelve weeks 56 vessels that had scheduled calls in the port of Montevideo had to be cancelled or re-routed because of the conflicts in Brazil mainly in the port of Santos and "this list includes all type of vessels, grain bulk, chip bulk, containers, etc", added Rigby. "This is particularly negative for Uruguayan interests because our vessels in their normal rotation southbound call in Montevideo after having been to Buenos Aires, which means Montevideo in a tight schedule, is first out", said Rigby. Normally from Montevideo vessels sail northbound to Rio Grande and Santos and finally Sepetiba before heading off to United States or the European Union. But when conflicts break out in Santos and vessels have to wait in the outer port "all our schedules are wiped out and our operation windows disappear since we work on very tight international schedules in Europe and the US". Rigby points out for Hamburg-Sud this is highly nerve racking since they work mostly with perishables (beef, fish, fruit) which must comply with the "just on time" principle in its final destination ports. "These are very strict and tight contracts which oblige us to keep to the timetables agreed since distributors have certain period of time to send the produce out and supermarkets have expiration dates for perishables", point out Mr. Rigby. "If fruit has a window of 30 days to reach market we have to coordinate with utmost precision not only the temperature in the containers but also transport time and delivery time once the merchandise is unloaded". For the rest of the trip and to comply with the timetable vessels are left with very few hours to complete the rest of the cargo, or must move out because the berth has been assigned to some other ship. "This is particularly damaging for Buenos Aires, which is normally congested, and forces us to cancel the Montevideo call. Containers for Montevideo are unloaded in Buenos Aires and then re-shipped to Montevideo. This situation affects all international services from Hamburg-Sud to North Europe, Mediterranean, Brazil and the US". However if Montevideo expands its container facilities, "it could easily become a cargo concentration and distribution point for the area". "This means making Montevideo a hub, for which it has all the conditions plus acting to complement major terminals such as Buenos Aires, limited in space and capacity, and Rio Grande in Brazil. But this also needs determination because the Brazilian ports distortions will continue to repeat themselves", concludes Hamburg-Sud manager.