A group of 8 ambassadorsbelonging to the embassies of Germany, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Spain and the European Unionthey were visiting this Monday the terminal of the port of Montevideo.
The delegation was received by the general manager of Katoen Natie, Vincent Vandecauter in the central offices on Buenos Aires Street and then they toured the facilities of the port of Montevideo and the progress in the expansion works of the container yard, in what will be the largest private investment in the history of the port terminal, somewhat higher at US$450 million.
The ambassador of the European Union, the Italian Paolo Berizzi, said that he has been in the country for six months and that since his arrival he wanted to visit TCP to see the place from where much of the merchandise leaves for Europe.
“They explained to me the prospect of expansion and I think it is very well placed taking into account the competition that there is at the moment in the world between port terminals to achieve more containers and more international trade,” he said.
Meanwhile, the general manager of Katoen Nati said that the visit arose from the interest of the ambassadors to learn about European investments in Uruguay.
“The TCP project is an important investment by a European company, so they want to know that investment, as well as TCP and the details of the work,” said the manager.
According to the executive, the ambassadors “learned many things about the operation of the port and what are the criteria for a future container terminal to be competitive in the region,” he said. In that sense, they talked about dredging, about the infrastructure and about the capacity that a terminal like this one in the port of Montevideo should have.
The diplomats who participated were: the ambassador of the European Union, Paolo Berizzi, the ambassador of Greece, Nafsika-Nancy Vraila, the one from Portugal, João Pedro Antunes, the one from Germany, Eugen Wollfarth, the Italian, Giovanni Iannuzzi, the French, Jean-Paul Seytre, the Minister Counselor of Spain, Silvia Cosano, the Belgian ambassador to Argentina, Karl Dhaene and the Uruguayan ambassador to Belgium and permanent representative to the European Union, Pablo Sader.
Once the works are completed, the port of Montevideo will have a state-of-the-art specialized terminal, which will at least triple its annual capacity and will allow it to serve the most modern ships (400m). The two docks, totaling more than 1,300 m, will allow TCP to operate 4 container ships simultaneously.
