Between a rock and a deep place

All but a handful of the 300 workers of Codesp, the Santos port authority, recently downed tools and brought the port to a virtual standstill. Everando Cirino dos Santos (president of port workers union Sindaport) said that if demands for extra overtime payments, an above inflation 9.6% pay rise and other conditions weren’t met, more strikes would follow. However, Codesp sources have now told CM that “all union grievances have been met (and) no further action is expected.”

Luiz Araujo, commercial manager, Tecondi the third biggest box terminal in Santos said that strike action had led to some dislocation with vessels being delayed around 12 hours at both Tecondi and Libra Terminais’ T-37 facility. “Some of the delays were caused by a snowball effect from the Codesp strike and also from the arrival of the heavy lift vessel bringing the new ship-to-shore gantry cranes to Libra T-37. Codesp says 25 vessels were delayed but many of them were probably at the public berths,” he added.

Secondly, on Saturday November 26, 2011 the final demolition blasting of the Itapema Rock was completed, providing greater depths (from 12.2 m to more than 14 m) for the existing container terminals of Tecondi and Rodrimar and crucially, for the two soon to be opened facilities of Brasil Terminal Portuaria (BTP), a joint venture between APM Terminals and MSC and Embraport (a DP World and Brazilian construction company Odebrecht venture).