Sao Paulo: The enduring fire at storage tanks near the Port of Santos is turning up the heat on the soy export business as hundreds of thousands of tonnes of soy commodities have been unable to reach the port because of safety concerns.
Truck access to Latin America’s busiest port was still restricted as the blaze at fuel tanks operated by bulk liquid storage specialist Ultracargo entered its eighth day.
A soy industry spokesman told Reuters on Thursday that 400,000 tonnes of soybeans and soymeal were being held up, equivalent to four days of shipments at this time of year. In past Aprils around 3 million tonnes of soy produce has been moved out of the Sao Paulo port, a third of the country’s entire exports of the commodity.
The timing is of the essence now as Brazil, the second-biggest soybean producer in the world, has nearly finished harvesting a record crop and needs to move it especially to China, which takes 70% of Brazil’s soy production.
