The north-eastern Brazilian Port of Suape is to have a new private use minerals terminal, which will be operated by Planalto Piauí Participações e Empreendimentos S.A. Effectively, it forms part of the Bemisa Brasil Operação Mineral S.A. group, a mining company that the federal government has authorized to build and operate the 717km Sertão Railway between Curral Novo (Piauí) and the Port of Suape. Investment of $288 million will be required to build the terminal, which is forecast to handle 13.5 million tonnes of iron ore annually.
Work on the terminal is scheduled to commence in 2025 across a 51.8-hectare area in the Industrial Port Zone (ZIP), on Cocaia Island. The new rail link will offer an alternative to the Transnordestina Railway, which will also serve the port.
The main export that the terminal is expected to handle is iron ore. This will mostly come from deposits that the parent company is developing in Curral Novo municipality, which has reserves of 800 million tonnes. This represents the largest mineral reserve in the state and one of the largest in the country.
According to Roberto Gusmão, managing director of the Port of Suape, Suape is the main port in the Brazilian north-east and also a concentrator of cargo, which is currently distributed by road and cabotage. With the arrival of the rail network, the port will also be able to handle soybeans from the states of Tocantins, Bahia, Piauí and Maranhão; fruit from São Francisco; and gypsum from the Sertão do Araripe.
The terminal, which has a 30-year concession, will be able to receive and ship 50,000 tonnes of ore daily, as well as having static storage of 780,000 tonnes.
The Bemisa group is one of Brazil’s largest in the field of mining and exporting minerals. Based in Minas Gerais, it currently has a presence in seven Brazilian states, where it has nine on-going operations, covering the extraction of iron ore, gold, nickel, phosphate and limestone.