News

With record shipments in some months of the year –such as January, where it obtained the best monthly record in its history–, during 2020 Puerto Quequén moved merchandise for more than 6.5 million tons. It is not the ceiling for this Buenos Aires port enclave, where they aspire to export more than 10 million tons of cereals in one year. For this purpose, the large multinational players in the business already have their bets written down, with increasing shipments and investments.

For the fourth consecutive year, COFCO was at the head of operations. The multinational company with Chinese capital that absorbed Nidera and which is the largest exporter of grains in the country, exported almost 1.3 million tons from Puerto Quequén, standing out almost 370 thousand tons of soybeans, 355 thousand of wheat and 275 thousand corn. In addition to its leadership, the figure represented 300 thousand tons less than in 2019.

The one who did have its rise in transfers abroad during the pandemic year was Oleaginosa Moreno, a company orbited by the multinational Canadian capital Glencore. Port voices consulted by this medium attribute this growth to the fate of his former associate in Renova, Vicentin. Through this joint venture, both firms had accentuated during the Let's change their exports from this port terminal era, even more since the end of 2018 when Renova took over the control board of Cargill's sunflower and soy processing plant in Quequen.

Under this scheme, Renova became the owner of the facilities, but not of the products (soybean and sunflower oils and pellets) that had been operated separately: Oleaginosa Moreno, on the one hand, and Vicentin, on the other, according to the degree of participation in society. In the outbreak of Vicentin (which in 2019 had exported almost 210 thousand tons), Oleaginosa Moreno - which was left with full control of the Renova plants in Quequén - went from exporting just over 600 thousand tons in 2019 to 875 thousand in 2020 .

The best positioned local firm was the Asociación de Cooperativas Argentinas (ACA), which registered more than 954 thousand tons exported in 2020, highlighting 267 thousand tons of corn, almost 200 thousand of soybeans and more than 300 thousand of beer barley and forage .

With this last crop, Grupo Los Grobo accentuated its field of action in this cereal port bastion. Days into 2021, it exported 5,000 tons of barley to China. In this way, the firm that until the end of last year was chaired by the "king of soybeans" Gustavo Grobocopatel, who resigned from his position (not the 24% ownership), makes its first commercial operation of this crop destined for the Asian giant. of shares) and settled in Uruguay.

Los Grobo is now chaired by his former vice, Santiago Cotter, representing the investment group Victoria Capital Partners, which has controlled Los Grobo since 2016.

In 2020, Los Grobo had registered operations for more than 66 thousand tons of corn in Quequén, far from other leading agro-exporters such as Bunge, which was on the podium with more than 935 thousand tons shipped (half the valued corn).

Another strong player continues to be CHS, which, together with COFCO, operates the Site 0 port terminal there, inaugurated in 2016 by the Minister of Transportation Guillermo Dietrich and which allowed these firms to significantly increase their operations from Quequén. In 2020, CHS Argentina, a subsidiary of the largest agricultural cooperative in the United States, maintained its level of shipments of 2019: more than 600 thousand tons shipped (230 thousand tons of soy, almost 215 thousand of corn and 150 thousand of wheat).

Both at Site 0 and at the two remaining Quequén terminals, operations were not affected by the unemployment of the grain and oil receivers, since the companies that operate these terminals reached a separate salary agreement.

On the other hand, given the growth of agricultural production and a projection of an increase in fertilizer consumption of around 50% by 2025, Glencore, ACA and the Sprayers firm made investments in a fertilizer terminal, aiming at the development of the logistics of import and commercialization of this product for the area of ​​influence in full expansion.

"Over an area of ​​5.9 hectares, at sites 11 and 12 of Puerto Quequén, the terminal has a liquid fertilizer storage capacity of 24 thousand cubic meters and a solid fertilizer cell of 76 thousand tons," they detail from the port consortium on the investment in the Pier Doce SA terminal, a concession firm chaired by Ramiro María Fernández Candia, a businessman from Necoche linked to waste collection companies.

The construction and realization of this fertilizer terminal had strong resistance from environmental activists who warned about the possible dangers that the material stored there could represent for the neighboring population. However, the terminal was inaugurated last December, with which it is estimated that operations in the port complex will increase in 2021. (Damián Belastegui – LETRA P) www.nuestromar.org

Automatic translation from spanish.