Brazilian Port Logistics

Despite initial reports of slow farmer selling, a delayed harvest and a record soybean crop, Brazilian export logistics appear to be managing successfully. In the past, pressure on Brazil’s export logistics have led to extreme levels of Panamax and geared vessel congestion. In 2023, over 6% of the Panamax fleet was waiting off Brazil in October, reducing the available fleet and supporting earnings.

Brazil’s exports of soybeans are already up 19% y-o-y since the start of the year. However, Brazil’s soybean harvest is reportedly 9%-points below the same time a year ago at 30% as of February, suggesting delayed export flows. This could lead to greater pressure on the supply chain later in the soybean export season as greater volumes are needed to be shipped within a shorter time frame. We forecast Brazil’s soy (beans and meal) exports up 6.2% in 2026 from last year’s already strong exports. Adding to potential disruptions, Brazil’s corn and sugar exports typically ramp up from July, exacerbating the problem of later season shipments.

Despite the aforementioned issues, the chart on the right suggests exports and turnaround time have decoupled since 2023, as investment into the country’s ports have lessened bottlenecks. In 2023, the maximum grain exported in a week was 0.98 Mt. By 2025, it  increased to 1.17 Mt.

The increase in the use of northern arc ports (counted as north of Recife) has assisted this development. Soybean exports out of the country’s northern arc ports have risen 8%-points from 2018 to 32% of exports in 2025. Within this, there has been an increase of 5 Mt of soybean exports from 2023.

Diversifying ports acts not only to lessen bottlenecks at the point of shipment, but also distributes load on Brazil’s interior logistics capacity. Historically, Brazil has faced much higher internal transportation costs than its US competitors. Brazilian exports are largely reliant on trucking via highways whereas the US utilises the Mississippi river for lower cost barging. However, northern Brazilian systems are also able to utilise the country’s amazon rivers for barging, helping to narrow the spread of transport costs between the US and Brazil.

As the chart above demonstrates, there has been a decline in the spread between North Mato Grosso exports and those from Minneapolis. Exports from North Mato Grosso are able to transported north via trucks and inland waterways.

Additionally, a shift away from slower ports has helped. Turnaround times at Paranagua port (the second largest Brazilian grain export port) have consistently been above the average for grain loading at Brazilian ports. In the prior 5 years, Paranagua has been 3 days slower than the country’s average. While Brazil’s grain exports have grown, Paranagua’s share of the total has declined. Since 2018, the share from Paranagua has declined 2%-points. This hasn’t been part of a shift away from major ports, as the largest grain export port, Santos, has had its share increase 2%-points over the same period, a massive 27.0 Mt to 77.3 Mt. Santos port has also more closely followed the total Brazilian average turnaround time, often coming below it.

Risks of renewed congestion remain, particularly if export volumes accelerate sharply while inland logistics face disruption. However, the improvement in port logistics and diversification of supply chains across Brazil  have gone a long way to lessen the impact of bottlenecks that typically resulted from strong exports.

By Cara Hatton, Senior Dry Bulk Analyst, Research, SSY