The terminal was inaugurated during the pandemic about two months ago, at the Port of Itaqui, in São Luís, Maranhão

Reuters company executives said on Thursday that Raízen company has started receiving fuel ships and the project will expand the country's diesel imports and product distribution to the north and northeast. The newest terminal has an investment of around 200 million reais, can handle 1,5 billion liters of fuel annually and is capable of storing up to 80 million liters of fuel. In addition, it is connected to railroads, which ensures that the company can also transport low-cost ethanol and biodiesel from the Midwest.

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Conceived from the moment that Petrobras began to implement market prices for Brazilian oil products a few years ago, the terminal effectively promised to “challenge”, even after some of these refineries became controlled by the private sector. For Nilton Gabardo, Raízen's Director of Business Development and Infrastructure, what prevails in the fuel market is a “cost reduction race”, which is the essence of the terminal.

“When you work with efficient costs, you end up challenging refiners more… the first thing is to have capacity, then you can access options… The Brazilian market in general does not have the infrastructure to compete at a high level with refineries, and this capacity from Raízen will allow this…”, said Nilton.

The company told Reuters that, with the assets, Raízen will expand competition with BR Distribuidora, which is headquartered in São Luís, and should also carry out storage at the Tequimar terminal. Petrobras' subsidiary Transpetro also has a terminal at the port.

According to Raízen, in the long term, this group of terminals and distribution bases are the company's most efficient assets, operating large train compositions connected by the rail network of the Ferrovia Centro-Atlântica, in addition to the Ferrovia Norte-Sul.

“This is the materialization of Raízen as a player that believes in the high performance differential, brings resilience to the business, brings options to us, whether they be imports, cabotage, ethanol output (exports), ethanol imports, biodiesel, we have having said that it is a flex terminal, this characteristic is very important”, said Antonio Simões, who is VP of Logistics, Distribution and Energy at Raízen.

According to Reuters, the port of Itaqui registered a 7% increase in traffic this year, mainly driven by the transport of soy, which mainly shows the strength of agribusiness, which was less affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Regarding the impact of the pandemic on the fuel market, Simões pointed out that the company has started to resume sales, mainly with diesel.

"Diesel returned even a little faster than imagined to similar levels..., greatly driven by the good harvest, agribusiness did not have major impacts, this is reflected in the resumption of diesel volume", said Antonio, considering that gasoline and ethanol still depend on the reopening of large cities.