Mario Osava – IPS News, 08/24/2011
The port of Pecém in Brazil’s impoverished Northeast region received a large order to unload and store cement factory equipment imported from China. The port authorities were unable to accept the original order, as the cargo would have occupied 40,000 square metres of storage space, nearly half the total available.
The order, which arrived a month ago, is still under consideration, and the director of deployment and expansion for the Pecém terminal, Hernani de Carvalho Junior, has devised a practical solution. He recommends the equipment be delivered in two lots, with the second being unloaded after the first has left the port storage space.
The large order is highly unusual, but it is a sign of the industrialisation taking place in the semiarid Northeast, Brazil’s poorest region. Many industrial investments have been attracted by new ports designed also as manufacturing and energy production hubs.
