More than 60% of Brazil’s soybean crop is transported by truck over extremely bad roads leading to a spillage rate of 3% according to Pranav Garg, managing director of HighQuest Partners.  Major ports are being developed in northern Brazil, which will eventually ease congestion at the traditional southern ports. However, inland transportation systems in the country are lagging which will cause continued difficulty in getting cargoes to those ports.  Bunge has established a new port in the northern city of Vila do Conde through which it hopes to ship 4 million metric tons of soybeans by 2015 and a consortium of companies including Glencore, Dreyfus, and the Brazilian firms CGG, NovaAgri, Amaggi, and Sojitz (via CGG)  have all invested in a port facility in Itaqui, despite that connections to the port remain problematic. Brazil has been constructing a state-owned highway, BR-163, through the Amazon but although its completion is planned for next year, after 10 years of delays sections still remain unpaved.  And once complete maintenance will be problematic.  Delays also plague the completion of the north-south railway through the country which is widely controlled by iron-ore companies that give priority to their own shipments. For the available rail freight open for bidding, costs in Brazil are approximately twice that of the U.S. To read further about Brazil’s disjointed infrastructure system, which was discussed at Global AgInvesting’s New York conference:

Read the article
To receive relevant news stories with summaries provided by GAI Research & Insight, subscribe to Global AgDevelopments, our free weekly enhanced eNews service