ALL Logística has redefined their project for transporting containers to the Port of Santos, to try to launch it sooner. At an estimated cost of R$ 600 million (€ 251.43 million), mostly for the expansion of the tunnels that take the operator’s lines through to the Port, the project has now received a cheaper version, so that it may start operation more quickly – possibly this year.
Nowadays, ALL has two major projects for cargo transport currently under way. One of them involves containers and the other iron ore.
Still being agreed with Vale, the ore project plans to bring up to 15 million tons annually from the mining company’s unit in Corumbá, State of Mato Grosso do Sul. The mine currently produces only 3 million tons, but a Vale project, which as yet does not have a date to get off the ground, wants to raise the production capacity, and the company is now agreeing transport routes. According to the President of ALL, Paulo Basílio, one of the two projects – the mining project or the container project – shall be launched in 2010.
In the container area, ALL wishes to obtain part of the 30 million tons of cargo handled by the port of Santos, of which 97% is transported by truck. According to the administration of the Port of Santos, this level of cargo could get up to 90 million tons within fifteen years, and the profile of local transport must change, with greater emphasis being given to rail transport.
In ALL’s view, the transport of this cargo by train would only be economically competitive compared to road transport if it is made in double-stack carriages with two levels of containers. This would require work to lower the track in the tunnels of at least one of the two lines used by ALL in the Serra do Mar mountain range in São Paulo, so that the higher carriages are able to pass.
The new version moves away from the idea of deepening the track level in the tunnels. This work would be expensive and would also require closure of one of the two lines used by the company, which is considered unfeasible at the present time, in the light of the growing volume of cargo assigned to the stretch – the Rumo Logística project alone plans to put an additional 9 million tons of sugar on the route.
To get around the difficulty of the track depth, the idea is now to take the double-stack carriages as far as the entrance to the tunnels, and then make the last 40 km of the trip on single carriages. The main logistics center for this project should be in the city of Campinas which lies some 290 km from the Port. The company feels that just travelling the first kilometers on double-decker carriages would already make the operation feasible.
In the long term, with the growth of the operation, the solution taken up by the company would be that of reopening a third line under the ALL concession in the Serra do Mar, currently unused. This would require some investments in assets but would avoid the interruption of traffic flow on the two lines currently used by the network.
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