A mountain of burned sugar litters the port of Santos.
Firefighters yesterday contained a blaze at Cosan SA’s sugar facilities at the Port of Santos in Brazil, but exports from the world’s largest producer of the sweetener may be slowed.
Cosan said in a statement that only one warehouse, controlled by its Rumo Logística transportation unit, had been damaged. Warehouse 10, where the fire took place, had 15,000 tonnes of sugar in storage, about a third of a cargo ship, and has 18,000 tonnes capacity.
Another of Cosan’s 11 warehouses at Santos, Warehouse 5, appeared to have minor damage, according to a Reuters witness, while a shiploader and a conveyer belt for transferring sugar between warehouses looked unusable.
Rumo has two terminals, 16 and 19, at Santos and a total of five shiploaders. Terminal 16 was not affected by the fire and remained operational, Cosan said.
Damage looked significantly less severe than that from an October fire in Santos at Copersucar SA. That blaze quickly sent futures prices sharply higher and caused the sugar trader, Brazil’s largest, to issue force majeure to some clients.
“It seems that the impact on sugar operations won’t be very large,” said analyst Nicolle Castro of Santos-based SA Commodities, which monitors ship movements at Brazil’s ports.
Copersucar’s terminal, which is on a lot adjacent to Rumo, had restored about half of its 10mn-tonne capacity by June and was able to reroute some exports through other terminals, including Rumo’s. Copersucar retrieved and loaded 30,000 tonnes of sugar from the fire-damaged terminal a month later.
The company has since fixed almost half of the terminal’s pre-fire capacity of 10mn tonnes but does not expect to have full capacity until February 2015.
Rumo’s warehouses can hold 550,000 tonnes and have a total export capacity of 12mn tonnes a year.
When large stockpiles of sugar ignite, they can be difficult to extinguish quickly. As they burn, the fire creates a carbonized outer shell that inhibits the penetration of water and chemicals that would otherwise snuff out the fire.
“The fire is contained,” Santos Fire Department Captain Marcelo Medeiros told Reuters. “There are still some minor outbreaks but we expect to have them cleaned up by this afternoon.”
The fire broke out at 4.30pm (1930 GMT) on Sunday. The Santos Port Authority had no comment on the fire because the cause was still unknown.