BRAZIL: Plans are taking shape for the construction of a heavy haul railway and deepwater port in northeastern Brazil, in order to accommodate rising export traffic from the mining and agricultural sectors.
The planned Terminal Portuário de Alcântara would be constructed on Cajual Island on the west bank of the Baía de São Marcos, opposite the existing Ponta da Madeira terminal near São Luis. It would initially offer four berths and later eight, able to accommodate 400 000 tonne ships thanks to the presence of deep channels permitting a 25 m draught. The main cargoes would be iron ore and agricultural products.
To be built in two phases, the 1 600 mm gauge Maranhão Railway would run from the new port to a junction with Ferrovia Norte Sul near Açailândia. The first phase, around 220 km in length and costed at R$3∙4bn, would link the port to the Estrada de Ferro Carajás, probably in the Santa Ines area. The second phase would run southwest from the EFC junction for about 300 km to meet the FNS.
Growth projections
The port and railway are being promoted by Grão-Pará-Multimodal, a business set up in 2017 with shareholder companies in São Paulo and São Luis. The scheme is a response to forecast rises in demand for ores and agricultural products, offering an alternative export corridor for products that currently pass through the EFC-served port at Ponta da Madeira which GPM considers to be close to the limit of its capacity.
As the output of Vale’s iron ore mines at Carajás and the S11D site has risen, the capacity of EFC has been increased to handle around 230 million tonnes per annum through a double-tracking and modernisation programme dating from 2016. However, GPM anticipates that traffic could increase significantly in the near future, citing a Vale Bank of America Merrill Lynch presentation from May 2020 that projects a higher output from Vale’s existing mines taking EFC flows up to 260 mtpa.
With the imminent completion of FNS, GPM also envisages a huge increase in agricultural and other export traffic generated from that line’s catchment area. The 383 km FICO railway being built by Valec from Água Boa in Mato Grosso state to a junction with FNS at Mara Rosa in Goiás is expected to generate a further 43 mtpa.
To this could be added 10 mtpa from the first 200 km section of the EF232 project from Porto Franco on FNS to Balsas in Maranhão state. This line would later be extended by 420 km to link up with the Transnordestina scheme at Eliseu Martins in Piauí state. Factoring in a degree of seasonality, GPM estimates that the peak traffic volumes could equate to as much as 677 mpta by 2030.
Open access railway
GPM proposes to accommodate much of the additional traffic by building the Maranhão Railway and its associated port, pointing out that its route to the ocean would be 50 km shorter than the EFC line to Ponta da Madeira. The company’s role in the railway would be limited to construction and maintenance of the infrastructure, with the trains being operated by other companies under open access arrangements.
The promoter has already signed a so-called Adhesion Contract with the Brazilian government covering development of the port as a ‘private use terminal’. It hopes to be granted an environmental licence in 2021, allowing work to start in 2022 with initial operations envisaged just two years later.
The project is currently awaiting the passage of legislation that would establish a revised legal framework for railway development in Brazil. This would allow private sector investors to assume the commercial risk for new projects; at the moment rail schemes have to be developed as government initiatives.
