In April, 95 ships exporting coffee were delayed at the Port of Santos (SP)

In April 2024, 95 ships exporting coffee, or 80% of the total, were delayed or changed calls at the Port of Santos (SP), the main outlet for the product in Brazil. The longest period determined was 30 days between the opening of the first and the last deadline. The data appears in the most recent Detention Zero Bulletin (DTZ), prepared by ElloX Digital in partnership with the Brazilian Coffee Exporters Council (Cecafé).

In other Brazilian ports that ship coffee abroad, the scenario is also worrying. According to the DTZ Bulletin, the rate of ship delays for product exports in the Rio de Janeiro (RJ) port complex, responsible for 27% of shipments in 2024, was 70%; in Paranaguá (PR), 42%; in Salvador (BA), 29%; and in Vitória (ES), 16%. Overall, 210 coffee export ships, or 54% of a total of 391 container ships, were delayed in April.

"Of this number of vessels with altered calls, 95 were in Santos alone, which accounts for 70% of coffee exports this year. In other words, Brazilian exporters continue to face intense logistical challenges, with the high rate of ship delays and the lack of space in the port of Santos, which results in inefficiencies, standing out as the main obstacles in adding high, unplanned costs to the actors in the segment", comments Eduardo Heron, technical director of Cecafé.

Another critical fact highlighted by the DTZ Bulletin is the continuity of the short period of opening gates at the Port of Santos, which is the time that the exporter has to deliver its shipments, originating in the interior of the country, in compliance with the cargo deadline established by the terminals. in ports.

Last month, only 11% of boarding procedures had a period of more than four days of open gate for ships at the Port of Santos, the lowest rate recorded since the beginning of the survey, in January 2023. Another 63% had between three and four days and 26% had less than two days.

"Furthermore, last month, 42 ships did not even have a gate opening at the Santos terminal, which is extremely worrying, as this automatically generates high and unexpected additional pre-stacking costs for exporters, who already live an expensive scenario, with logistical bottlenecks, to honor its commitments to Brazilian coffee importers”, laments Heron.

DTZ Bulletin

Cecafé entered into a partnership with ElloX Digital, a technology startup in the logistics segment, to enable its members to obtain evidence, such as information and prints from port terminal websites, collected automatically, four times a day, through a web crawler ( robots), without the need to allocate a professional specifically for this activity.

The partnership aims to facilitate the obtaining of evidence and highlight the causes of additional storage charges and detentions to coffee exporters, caused by the postponement of shipments or ship delays by maritime transport companies, and use them for reporting at the National Waterway Transport Agency (Antaq).

“Antaq lacks substantial data and evidence regarding the causes of additional and unexpected charges to improve its standard. Without the presentation of consistent evidence, the Agency is limited in improving its regulations and users will continue to pay high charges for additional storage and detentions”, reveals Heron.

According to him, the DTZ Bulletin becomes fundamental and effective for coffee exporters who join the initiative, so that they can attest to the importance of improving Antaq regulation.

“We noticed a positive response from the Agency on the topic and we have maintained a positive agenda with the state-owned company, with the aim of improving standards and curbing abuses, through the presentation of the evidence requested by it, which we obtained through the partnership with ElloX ”, concludes the technical director of Cecafé.