In 160 years the northern region of Santa Catarina has evolved from an isolated colony of immigrants to a set of middle-sized cities that will have grown the most in Brazil by 2025
Lúcio Mattos – Joinville (SC)
For the first 118 immigrants, the day of their arrival must have been a huge shock. Coming from Switzerland and Germany, they had to face hours traveling on a row boat in the middle of the suffocating heat of the tropical jungle, following the narrow course of the Cachoeira River – after spending weeks in the ocean on board of Barca
Colón, when crossing from Hamburg to the Port of São Francisco do Sul. When their ship finally birthed at Colônia Dona Francisca, which would be the origin of current Joinville (SC), in March 1851, what they found was far from being the paradise romantically spoken at the Colonizing Society. What was there was a 200m x 1000 m clear in the middle of virgin woods and a vast area covered with the mud left by the summer rains, most of it still covered with a huge quantity of pieces of recently felled trees to open some space in the woods. A little more than 160 years later the great-grandchildren of those pioneers seem to be close to see the “promised land” to come true in the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The biggest city in Santa Catarina, it has 546 thousand inhabitants, Joinville is the epicenter of a growth wave including a much bigger region, starting in Jaraguá do Sul and Itapoá, along the BR-101, in the so-called northern region of that state. A study of McKinsey Consulting conducted in 2011 pointed out that area as the Brazilian urban region with over half a million inhabitants that will grow the most until 2025.
An attempt to measure the region’s growth by simply considering increases in the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) usually shows a portrait of the past because the numbers presented by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) are published two or three years in delay –
Joinville had the third biggest GDP in the Southern Region of the country in 2011, R$18.8 billion, behind only of Curitiba and Porto Alegre, the capital cities of the states of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. But there are other ways to quantify growth.
The recent evolution becomes more visible in consumption of electricity, basic input for any modern economic activity. The balance sheets of Celesc (Centrais Elétricas de Santa Catarina), the energy company that supplies the region, show that between the months January and April this year the volume consumed by plants jumped by 51% against the same four months in 2009, growing to 727 million kWh. In that same comparison, the rate of industrial consumers increased by 25% in five year, from approximately 9 thousand to 11.3 thousand in 2014. Those figures are a regional sample because they include the whole so-called Joinville Agency of that distributor, including, in addition to Joinville, the municipalities of Araquari, Balneário Barra do Sul, Garuva, Itapoá and São Francisco do Sul.
New plants
The installation of large companies in the northern region, another visible sign of growth, has become a constant event in the last years. The most recent is the arrival of a BMW plant, the first one of that German assembling company in Latin America. Still being built, the unit will occupy a 500 thousand m2 area on the borders of the BR-101 in the municipality of Araquari, next to Joinville, which is expected to start production by the end of the year. With R$600 million investments, 1,300 jobs will be created and a forecast to reach full capacity in 2016 by assembling 32 thousand vehicles per year. Five models will be manufactured in the north of the state: Series 1, Series 3, X1, X3 and the extended version of Mini Cooper.
The arrival of BMW is an example of the new model of growth in the region. Although Joinville remains the center of the attention, a lack of adequate pieces of land for large industrial undertakings in the city leads giant companies to the neighboring municipalities. If the Germans are coming, South-Korean arrived earlier, in October last year, when in Garuva was inaugurate (38 km far from Joinville) a LS Tractor’s tractor plant, the first one of the LS Mitron group outside Asia. With R$150 million investments, the plan is to produce 5 thousand small and middle-sized tractors per year (from 25 to 100 horses of potency), with the objective of taking over the leadership in the Brazilian market by 2020. On the day of the inauguration LS Mitron’s CEO in Brazil, Jung Soo Yoo summarized the reasons for the choice of the north of Santa Catarina: a unique combination in Brazil of ports, roads and qualified labor. Joinville is in the middle of the South Region, 100 km far from Curitiba (PR) and 625 km far from Porto Alegre (RS), and 500 km far from São Paulo (SP), the biggest consumer market in the country. Cut by the BR-101, the biggest North-South connection in Brazil, the area is served by two ports: Itapoá (80 km) and São Francisco do Sul (40 km). Curiously, the location, seen as a difficulty to the development in the century before the last, has become the biggest competitive advantage of the former colony of immigrants in internationalized logistics in the current scenario.
To complete, the industrial tradition that has developed giants such as Embraco (compressors for refrigeration), Tupy (foundry) and Tigre (PVC joints) in Joinville, in addition to WEG (electric engines) and Malwee (textiles) in Jaraguá do Sul, eases qualifying and contracting qualified personnel for the newly-comers. “Here in Brazil, we have a differentiated infrastructure”, states Mario Cezar de Aguiar, Fiesc VP (Federation of the Industries of Santa Catarina) and chairman of the Chamber for Affairs of Logistic Transportation of the entity. “We have enviable port compounds and a duplicated road that serves the region, in addition to qualified labor and guaranteed supply of gas and electricity”.
The last large industrial undertaking to be set up in Joinville’s territory was GM, which inaugurated a plant of engines in February last year, also in a piece of land on the borders of the BR-101, with the objective of supplying its units in Gravataí (RS) and Rosário (Argentina), to equip the Chevrolet models Onix and Prisma. It was a R$350 million investment, which has created a structure able to produce 120 thousand engines and 200 thousand heads per year.
Ports increased
If there is no more space for new large plants in Joinville, the city still benefits from the growth in its outskirts by deepening its metamorphosis into an industrial pool towards a regional commercial and service center. An example is the transfer of BMW’s Distribution Center of Vehicles to the municipality in February last year which used to be based in São Bernardo do Campo (SP), an action that was taken before the plant was opened. One by one the cars branded BMW that are imported to Brazil go through the warehouse located at Perini Business Park, an industrial compoun
d located in the north of the municipality where sometimes they undergo some adaptations to have them meet the Brazilian laws. That German assembling company expects to sell 20 thousand vehicles in Brazil this year, and every one of them will have been carried as far as Joinville, most of them unloaded in the neighboring port.
To accommodate this whole growth, a series of improvements in the region’s infrastructure is being made, including increases in two ports and mending the roads leading to them, in addition to an increase in the capacity of energy distribution.
In Itapoá, a new access to the port is being built, as from the BR-101, the so-called Contorno de Garuva. The work under the responsibility of the Government of the State of Santa Catarina contemplates 9 km of a new road, including an overhead road over the road connecting the south and the north of the country, with R$27.1 million investments. The work, done by a consortium between the construction companies Empo e Fortunato, started in April last year and is expected to be delivered in February 2015.
Twenty-five percent of the construction is complete, according to the superintendent of the State Department of Infrastructure for the Northern Region, Ademir Machado. “All the area surrounding Porto Itapoá will grow significantly. Just imagine where the suppliers of those big companies coming here will set up their facilities?” says Machado. “And we are not talking in the next 50 years, but in the next five”.
To bring some relief to the traffic of cars moving towards São Francisco do Sul via the BR-280 (the road that cuts the region as from Jaraguá do Sul) – which has a direct impact on the access to the port – , the State Government is paving the Rio do Morro Road, a connection between Vila da Glória (in São Francisco) and Jaca district (in Itapoá). Summer destination of the people from Joinville, both municipalities face frequent traffic jams during the summer. Paved, the Rio do Morro Road will be an alternative for tourists, thus reducing traffic in the BR-280.
The construction started in April last year under the responsibility of construction company Vogelsanger Pavimentação. It is expected to be complete by February 2015, according to Machado. 9.3 km will be paved with R$13.1 million investment. Ten percent of that total has already been finished.
BR-238
The BR-280 per se, the main link among Jaraguá do Sul, Joinville and the Port of São Francisco do Sul is a sensitive matter. The road has just two lanes and its duplication is an old regional demand promised by the Federal Government since the 1990’s. Divided into three lots, the construction will have R$955 million total investment to be made by the National Department of Transportation Infrastructure (Dnit). The project to duplicate 74 km of that road has finally left the shelves last June, when the construction started at three of the stretches tendered, between Guaramirim and Jaraguá do Sul, of which the construction company Cetenco is in charge. Between km 51 and km 54 the company is removing useless dirt and replacing it with exploded rocks. After this phase is complete, earthmoving will start, scheduled for the beginning of August.
Between Guaramirim and the BR-101, Sulcatarinense, the company that made the winning bid for the construction work has already received service orders and is ready to start the work between km 45 and km 50. Along other areas in the stretch expropriations still have to be done in order to open new work fronts, according to Dnit.
The longest lot (between the Port of São Francisco do Sul and the BR-101), however, has had its tender under embargo by the Court of Justice at request of one of the construction companies involved in the tender (Sulcatarinense), and it is waiting for a solution. Dnit informs that it intends to launch a new invitation to bid for that stretch in August. For the other two stretches (38 km), completion is expected by the end of 2017.
The two ports in the northern region are also taking action to take advantage of the wave of growth. In São Francisco do Sul the construction of six berths was completed in November last year (201), which went from 150m to 280 m, thus enabling a 30% increase in the volume of the annual cargo movement. The investment was R$35 million, out of which R$30 million by the Federal Government and R$5 by the very port.
The Port Itapoá has an even more ambitious expansion plan, including the construction of a third berth (today there are two), installation of eight new Panamax super-post portainers (cranes that load vessels), thus increasing the number of those machines from four to twelve, in addition to tripling the area of its yard, from current 156 thousand m2 to 467 thousand m2. The total cost of the construction, which will multiply by four the capacity of moving cargoes (from current 500 thousand TEUs to 2 million TEUs per year), has been estimated at R$700 million.
Beginning the construction work still depends on the environmental licensing process by Ibama (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources). That authorization was expected last February, but it was not granted. Construction work related to the expansion of Port Itapoá is expected to take one year and a half after the date it is cleared.
In the BR-101, the main highway in the region, Autopista Litoral Sul, the operator of that highway, is working to reinforce and widen two bridges, it is building ancillary marginal lanes in the road in Joinville, Barra Velha and Piçarras, in addition to a new viaduct of access in the municipality of Penha. According to that company, 28 thousand vehicles pass the toll booths area in Garuva daily on average, and there is a projection of an annual growth of 4% in that flow.
As to energy, Celesc has set a plan of constructions to increase the offer of electricity to the region with total investments of R$133.3 million in the 2011-2015 period, including the regional agencies of Joinville and Jaraguá do Sul (which encompasses the municipalities of Corupá, Guaramirim and Schroeder). Five new distribution substations have been built, three in Joinville, one in Garuva and one in Itapoá. Out of the total investment, 75%¨has been destined to high tension, which is used by plants.
Fonte: Revista O Empreiteiro
