This line is one of the most important for connections between South America and the Mediterranean

BOSSA NOVA introduces the only stopover in Santa Catarina at Itapoá

Porto Itapoá has another important addition to its list of services. From December 8th, the Bossa Nova service from the shipping company Maersk Line/Hamburg Süd will begin stopping, for the only time in Santa Catarina, at Itapoá. This same service serves the shipping company CMA CGM, under the name Sirius. It is one of the most important lines connecting South America with the Mediterranean Sea, and also provides connections to the Middle East and northern Europe.

Roberto Pandolfo, the Director of Business Development and Customer Experience for Porto Itapoá, welcomed the news.  “We have been trying to attract new shipping companies and services, to provide our customers with a better service by increasing the route options with calls at Itapoá”, he stressed. 

The new service route is: Port Tangier Mediterranee (Morocco) – Salvador – Santos – Paranaguá – Rio Grande – Itapoá – Santos – Itaguai Sepetiba – Port Tangier Mediterranee (Morocco) – Algeciras (Spain).

In addition to this service, Porto Itapoá also has another important connection to Europe via MSC’s WMED, which connects South America to ports in Spain, Italy and Malta.

Porto Itapoá has achieved a record level of refirgerated exports for August

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Porto Itapoá expands its yard by 50,000 m²

Growth of 12%

Porto Itapoá grew by 12.13% compared to last year, based on TEUs handled between January and July, according to data from ANTAQ (National Waterways Agency). As a result, the Santa Catarina terminal recorded the largest growth among the Top 5 ports in Brazil in 2022.

Refrigerated cargo was the main highlight for this period. Porto Itapoá handled 3414 containers of refrigerated cargo for export in August 2022 and this number was beaten in October, when the figure reached 3469 containers. This is the largest amount handled by the terminal, since 2016, when dedicated services to Venezuela were shut down, due to the crisis in the country in 2017.

Roberto Pandolfo, the Director of Business Development and Customer Experience, believes that the result is due to the Terminal’s excellent infrastructure, as well as the close working between staff and the shipping companies. “What makes our service stand out is the guarantee of regular departures,” he explained.

The Terminal is also the only port in Santa Catarina that has the ASAS service from Maersk, which began in September 2021. “We currently boast the shortest transit time for imports from Asia, out of all the ports in the south of Brazil,” added Pandolfo. In Brazil, you can only get double calls (where ships stop off on both the outward and return legs of their voyage) at Itapoá and Santos.

Cabotage (sailing between ports in Brazil) is one of the major reasons for these figures. Porto Itapoá’s operations in this area grew by 39% during this period. Cássio Schreiner, the president of Porto Itapoá, welcomed the heating up in the sector, but reminded everyone that the results were considerably affected by the new cabotage service that had been begun by the terminal.