BTP reaches major efficiency milestone, millionth container
Brasil Terminal Portuário (BTP), Brazil’s newest and most modern container terminal, has reached a number of important milestones: the facility, a joint venture between APM Terminals and Terminal Investment Limited, has handled container number 1 million, discharged on its quay from vessel no. 1000 to berth at its facility on Friday, 24 July, APM Terminals said on Monday.
This was achieved only one year and eight months after operations officially began at this terminal. Authorities and executives of BTP together watched the offloading of the container from MSC Agrigento, a vessel on the Ipanema service, arriving from Durban, South Africa.
This milestone follows a number of other impressive achievements in terms of operational performance.
BTP’s highest monthly average productivity per crane was achieved in May, with 34.11 moves per hour on the ship-to-shore cranes.
In addition to BTP’s increasing productivity rate, the terminal has also achieved to get the truck cycle - a critical measure for the performance of every container facility – down to only 40 minutes from pre-gate to gate out.
"Our employees have worked increasingly closely with our customers, seeking integrated solutions to improve our processes and increase the quality level of services provided" explains Cláudio Oliveira, CCO of BTP. "These efficiency milestones can, above all, be attributed to the BTP team’s dedicated work”.
In the first half of this year BTP handled 363,921 TEUs, a 167% increase over the number of containers handled in the same period in 2014 thanks to the dredging of the navigation channel which has increased the depth in the access channel to the same level all over, removing obstacles for larger ships to call.
“The Brazilian Ministry of Ports, the Santos Port Authority and other bodies involved in dredging also all played an essential role in the achievement of the two milestones we are celebrating today,” said CEO of BTP, Antonio Passaro.
BTP welcomed its first commercial vessel call in August 2013 and was officially opened in November 2013 after the planned berthing access and basin dredging was completed.
In 2010, APM Terminals finalized a joint venture agreement with Terminal Investment Limited, assuming a 50% share of ownership and jointly managing the facility. The 121 acre terminal offers a 15 meter depth, and 1,108 meters of quay which can accommodate up to three vessels of 9,200 TEU capacity simultaneously.
The terminal is equipped with eight Ship-to-Shore cranes, 26 RTGs, 40 terminal trucks and a semi-automated 16 lane gate. Container volume at the Port of Santos, which represents approximately 27% of Brazilian foreign trade, was 3.7 million TEUs in 2014. BTP handled 736,711 TEUs in its first full year of operations in 2014.