The general manager of TGU, Fabrizio Solía, informed EL ECO that the project consists of the “construction of ten silos for 2,000 tons each, that is, a static capacity of 20,000 tons. They are metal silos, with a conical bottom, they are small because the client needs to segregate the merchandise. It will have its own truck entry platform to load the plant, and a conveyor belt that connects with the current TGU belt that goes to the north dock.”
This terminal “would occupy barely half of the available area of the ANP esplanade that today has no productive use.” The estimated investment is “13 million dollars”.
Its profitability is a fact because “we have a pre-agreement with a client, we have all the ends tied, there was a soil analysis, environmental impact analysis, so that later it is considered a private initiative,” said Solía.
As an inconvenience today is the slowness on the part of the government authorities for its approval. “It comes with a rhythm that worries us, the private initiative project was presented in March in the Presidency, and passed to the Ministry of Transportation and Public Works because it is an area of ANP that is under its jurisdiction, and since March it has not moved ”, the manager of the company explained with concern, because if he did not leave as soon as possible, the pre-commercial agreement could fall.
For TGU, “today the main challenge it has is that it is a small terminal for the volumes loaded by ships. We are a terminal that, among all the warehouses, depending on the grain, has between 75,000 and 85,000 tons of capacity, and a ship carries up to 45,000 tons, and customers want all their merchandise to be inside the terminal before boarding, then we are a terminal that has less than two ships capacity”.
Hence, a new terminal will make it possible to optimize operations by “increasing the capacity that is essential for us in the viability of the business.”
The initiative “has two points: on the one hand, to achieve a differential service with an exclusive terminal for grains for human consumption that has levels of safety and security that are with a higher quality standard, and on the other hand to repower TGU with more loads,” he stressed.
If it has the approval of the government, it will generate a port movement that “would increase, at least, 20%. It would be, on average, an additional 250,000 tons. Today TGU moves around a million and something, and it would increase by 20 or 25%”.
The construction of the silos would require “between 8 and 10 months” and “120 direct positions would be used during the work, and a figure close to double with the indirect ones, and then some 20 qualified positions are expected to handle this technology during the operation. Last generation”; that would be added to the current staff of TGU that has “permanently 75 employees and at times of harvest peaks we go to 110,” said Solía.
Cofco to Navios
The Chinese firm Cofco has 36% of the shares in TGU and offered its share package to Navios SA, which is TGU’s neighboring port firm and competitor.
This became public last October through the weekly Brecha, EL ECO at that time consulted the engineer Ruben Martínez, director of Navíos, and pointed out that “the process was in the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries.”
Regarding the concession or not of the shares, Solía responded this week to EL ECO that he had no information, and stressed that the urgency for TGU is to have the approval of the construction of its new terminal.
