The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) and Brazil’s Vale Shipping Holdings Pte. Ltd. (VSH) last week formally announced their partnership using Subic Bay Freeport as Vale’s transshipment hub for iron ore.
VSH is an affiliate of Vale SA, the world’s largest producer of iron ore, which also controls the largest share of the seaborne market for iron ore.
The company will carry out iron ore transshipment operations from its Valemax mother vessel (capacity of up to 400,000 deadweight tons) to be anchored in Subic Bay, and then supply ore to feeder vessels, which are either Panamax or Capesize types.
The project is expected to boost Subic’s port revenues by up to P70 million in the first year of operations alone.
“The Philippines is growing now at almost the same pace with China, and the Philippines is emerging in the world economy,” VSH executive officer for ferrous minerals operations Jose Carlos Martins said during the project launch. “With this opportunity, now is our time — now is the time for countries like Brazil and the Philippines.”
For his part, SBMA chairman and administrator Roberto Garcia said, “In our strategic plan, we were very dead-set in continuing to promote the maritime business, and the Vale project is an important pillar of our strategy to maximize the use of Subic Bay.”
He added, “We have a very good future here,” pointing out that the Philippines is in a current state of rapid development, having achieved a 6.4% GDP growth rate this first quarter compared to 4% last year.
“And what is outstanding is the fact that it is the second highest growth rate in the region, second only to China,” he said.
The Vale project began in late 2010 when SBMA and Vale proposed a solution that matched Vale’s transshipment operations model with SBMA’s logistics business model.
Stefani Saño, SBMA senior deputy administrator for business and investment development, said Vale needed to optimize its large-scale iron ore distribution and delivery system and the SBMA offered the bay as a suitable offshore location.
“This logistics model would allow Vale’s huge vessels to transship the commodity with maximum efficiency in terms of time and cost, given the scale of operations required,” Saño said.
Saño added that apart from Vale, the SBMA is also trying to attract more logistics companies to invest in the Freeport. He said at least two logistics companies engaged in different line of commodities for offshore-based distribution operations have expressed interest in locating at Subic Bay.
Press and photo release from http://www.sbma.com/
