Brazil to focus on railway infrastructure to help farmers in 2018

Construction of the biggest grain logistics terminal in the centre-west state of Goias in Brazil that will serve the country’s Norte-Sul Railway will be complete in the next six months, according to Valec Engenharia, the government-run company in charge of railway development.

The terminal aims to help Goias, Brazil’s fourth biggest soybean producing state, expand its agricultural output by lowering freight costs in the land-locked region, especially for corn production given the higher relative freight costs of the grain.

After successfully auctioning off concessions to the private sector to build out and operate Brazil’s airports, roads, ports and oil and gas resources over the past year, the government of President Michel Temer is turning its efforts toward improving transport infrastructure for the country’s farming sector.

“In 2018, we will focus on railway development, because we need to help the farm sector grow while remaining competitive,” said Wellington Moreira Franco, secretary general of the Presidency responsible for the government’s infrastructure development plan known as the Investment Partnerships Program (PPI).

Just how much grain the intermodal terminal will can move once completed is still unclear, but it will be the largest logistic hub along the 684-km segment of the Norte-Sul Railway.

The hub is located near the soybean- and corn-rich growing region of Rio Verde in Goias, with 300 hectares of area, a parking patio that can hold 800 semi-tractor trailers and has access to Highway 210.

The Norte-Sul Railway already links part of Brazil’s biggest grain producing region in the centre-west with the grain terminal in Itaqui in Maranhao to the north.

The line will eventually link up with Brazil’s Southern Line, or Malha Sul, which will give access by rail to the main southern ports of Santos, Paranagua, and Rio Grande.

There are also plans for the line to link up with the East-West Integration Railway (FIOL), which will give agricultural output access to the port of Ilheus in Bahia to the east of Goias.

The Norte-Sul Line began operations in 2014 between Palmas in Tocantins and Anapolis in Goias and currently runs rolling stock that can haul 40,000 tons of bulk grains or fertilizers per train.

Palmas, western Bahia, Piaui and Maranhao are part of Brazil’s fastest expanding frontier grain belt known as Matopiba, made up of the states Maranhao, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia.

The southern leg of the Norte-Sul Railway is 93% completed and is expected to be finished by the end of this year.

Antonio Chavaglia, president of the Goias farming cooperative Comigo, said the railway and terminal “will be the most important recent development for the movement of agricultural production in Goias and Mato Grosso” - Brazil’s biggest grain producing state, that lies just west of Goias.

The government is hoping to sell the concessions for three railways this year, including the so-called Ferrograo, which will link the grain-rich northern areas of Mato Grosso state to ports on the Tapajos River in the lower Amazon Basin.