By Paul Scott Abbott, AJOT Insufficient port infrastructure and other challenges continue to hinder the efficient flow of trade in Brazil, but Latin America’s largest nation is looking to make progress, according to the Jacksonville Port Authority’s recently appointed manager of Latin American marketing and trade development. “I’ve felt a lot of the difficulties they face on a day-to-day basis,” said Joshua “J.R.” Rodriggs, a São Paulo native who assumed the JAXPORT post in July, after spending more than 20 years in diverse aspects of Brazilian trade. “The growth has gone on for two or three generations, and just now they are trying to bring things up to date,” said Rodriggs, whose experience includes trading in Brazilian nut exports, opening one of Maersk Line’s first Brazilian sales offices and serving as South Florida sales manager for Aliança/Hamburg Süd. “The ports haven’t caught up with the growth. In fact, they’re worse off.” A newly formed technical ministry office of the Brazilian government focusing on ports – Secretaría Especial de Puertos (SEP) – is one source of hope, according to Rodriggs. However, he cautioned that the secretariat’s annual budget of less than $400 million may not be large enough to provide a full solution. “The new secretariat has a lot on its plate,” Rodriggs said in a candid interview with the American Journal of Transportation. Brazilian commerce not only is slowed by lagging port infrastructure but also is impeded by road and rail insufficiencies and a host of bureaucratic issues, he added. It is not uncommon to see trucks queued for miles waiting to get into ports. Rodriggs said he believes one strategy that may be increasingly effective in surmounting the lack of road and rail infrastructure is the growing use of feeder vessels to provide cabotage for cargo between major transoceanic hubs and smaller port facilities. The SEP aims to work with Brazil’s port authority council to develop policies to maintain and enhance infrastructure at the nation’s 40 public ports, and to integrate terminal logistics with inland connections. “The growth needs to be organized,” Rodriggs said. “They need to create dynamics for competitiveness.” A few years ago, negative public sentiment stalled efforts to privatize Brazilian ports, he noted, adding, “Now, the government realizes that if they’re not going to privatize, the government must bring things up to speed.” Some positive developments already are being seen. For example, at Paranaguá, a lumber and bulk cargo port south of São Paulo, time windows are now being provided for carrier vessel calls, helping avert days-long offshore waits or scenarios in which carrier officials had elected to bypass the port altogether. Rodriggs said he anticipates that much of the SEP’s focus will be on Latin America’s busiest containerport, Santos, in the state of São Paulo in southeast Brazil. Plans call for doubling within five years the total annual cargo throughput capacity at Santos, which currently handles 76 million metric tons of goods a year. One challenge at Santos involves channel depth. Rodriggs said the current depth is 12 meters (39 feet) “on a good day,” although it ideally measures 14 meters (46 feet). To accommodate large modern vessels, port officials are seeking to deepen it to 15 meters (49 feet) and, eventually, to 17 meters (nearly 56 feet), but dredging is limited by the amount of material that can be removed and placed into fill. Authorities are fighting bureaucratic stumbling blocks in hopes of reaching an agreement that could nearly double the capacity for placement of dredged material. “The bureaucracy in Brazil is so consuming because you have to wait for discussions,” Rodriggs said. “People have to just sit and wait to get anything accomplished.” Rodriggs said reasons for lack of progress often remain a mystery. The Santos port collects some $80 million a year in fees assessed on vessels going through the port channel, while appropriate regular dredging would cost ab