Multinacional da França aposta no Marajó para escoar grãos do Arco Norte
Autor: Gleydson Costa de Souza | Publicado: 2017-03-03T15:16:00-08:00


Last among the major agricultural commodities traders to position themselves on the Tapajós corridor, the Louis Dreyfus Company has closed the purchase of a plot of land on the island of Marajó, in Pará, where it intends to build its first port on the main grain outflow route of Arco Norte from the country. The information is from Valor newspaper.

The multinational has opted for an area of ​​almost two thousand meters of front and calmer waters located in an old farm in the region known as Enseada do Malato.

It is here that Dreyfus intends to tranship the barges to bulk carriers destined for the exterior, with a maximum handling capacity of 9 million tons per year. If everything happens as expected, the company says.

"We're doing everything right, carefully. We want to make the terminal there, but new questions can always arise, "says Luis Barbieri, Director of Dreyfus Oleaginous in Brazil, referring to the initial presence in the region.


The purchase of the land in Marajó is the last step of a logistic project in Arco Norte that will consume an estimated R $ 1 billion in investments by the company.

Dreyfus will also invest in its own fleet of barges and pushers and at the grain transshipment terminal in Santarenzinho, a few kilometers from Miritituba, where most of the competition's river terminals have already been built.

According to Barbieri, the company awaits the issuance of licenses to begin work on the Tapajós.

The expectation is that the Santarenzinho installation license will be out by the end of 2017, which would make the terminal operational by mid-2019. "But whenever I said a date, I was late," he says.

In Marajó, the story may be longer. For this reason, Barbieri says he is also talking, in parallel, with two potential logistics partners in the region.

"Plan B" would be the attempt to ensure the flow of Dreyfus in a scenario of mismatching the schedule of port works.

The executive is cautious in talking about plans for the island of Pará. Over the last three years, Dreyfus has mapped out various land possibilities to implement its river corridor.

The Cove of Malato attracted by the draft - of 15 to 35 meters, depending on the place, great for the docking of great boats. But the company wanted to "take it easy", despite the lead of Bunge, Cargill, ADM, Amaggi, Glencore and Hidrovias do Brasil, all of them already sailing along the Tapajós river.

The advantage of arriving later in this case brought the benefit of learning with the error of the other.

In Pará, it is said that for each house there are always four floors - allusion to the land chaos that allows the dispute of a property by several "owners". The OTP of Odebrecht lived this in Miritituba - the ownership of its land was later questioned by a local.

"We did not want a loophole for legal questions or conflicts with the community. Our lawyers went to Portugal to study the sesmarias process, who sold them to [the land]. We have a dossier of this size, "says the executive, representing the volume of papers.

Conflicts with the riverside are also a concern. Last year, Bunge was questioned for alleged annoyances to the community of a small arm of the Tapajós, where it began to merge its barges.

In that process, Dreyfus hired The Nature Conservancy (TNC), an environmental organization with high expertise in the Amazon, to make the diagnosis of Marajó. Despite the good location, the island is known for its serious social disparity, abandonment of the state, conflicts between quilombolas and farmers, and more recently with rice farmers. Only in the area of ​​influence of Dreyfus, in Malato, today live about 400 families.

"We needed to understand the externalities of a project that is complex," says Barbieri.

After six months of public hearings and analysis of blind spots on the impact of his business in the region, Louis Dreyfus says he is more apt to engage with stakeholders. Earlier last year, he hired Eloiso Araújo, former Vale, to be the first Sustainability Manager in Pará.

The "social license" that the company sought to operate in Tapajós will still have to prove itself over time. For now, the Brazilian subsidiary will have to deal with other variables that will determine the pace of implementation of its new corridor to the North: a lower cash and large financial commitments already signed, such as its future bulk terminal in Santos, which auctioned off Together with Cargill, for R $ 303 million


Acessado em :&nbsp;Multinacional da França aposta no Marajó para escoar grãos do Arco Norte