Process will bring greater agility and cost savings for exporters
This August, TCP, the company that manages the Paranaguá Container Terminal, became the first terminal in Brazil to obtain authorization from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAPA) for the peanut sampling process to be carried out in a port area.
Sampling peanuts to check for aflatoxins is a necessary step for the goods to undergo laboratory analysis, attesting to the quality of the product in accordance with the standards set by the European Union for export. The continent is the most demanding market and the one that pays the most for the Brazilian product.
According to Giovanni Guidolim, TCP’s commercial, logistics and service manager, “sampling directly at the Paranaguá Container Terminal guarantees greater agility, safety and lower logistical costs for our clients, who will no longer need to send the peanuts to an intermediate warehouse to carry out the process”.
For exporters who ship their peanuts via other terminals, the cargo must first pass through an intermediate warehouse that has MAPA authorization to carry out the sampling.
Beatrice Peanuts, Brazil’s largest peanut exporter, will benefit from the measure. Shipping between 50 and 55 thousand tons of the product a year, 50% of which is destined for the European continent, the company from Tupã (SP) exports all its peanuts through TCP, a partnership that has lasted 8 years.
The export manager, Angela Nistarda, points out that “with the sampling and storage processes centralized at TCP, we will have faster operations, reducing the chances of lost shipments and avoiding extra costs with detention and no-shows. Another advantage is the security and traceability of the product, which won’t need to go through an intermediate warehouse.”
Authorization and sampling process
The negotiations to obtain authorization began in the second half of 2023, based on dialogue between the TCP team and Beatrice Peanuts, which faced a limitation in sampling capacity when the process was carried out in intermediate warehouses.
“We mobilized our regulatory team to understand the requirements of the intervening bodies in terms of safety and ideal conditions for the sampling process to take place in a port terminal. Based on studies and technical reports, we were able to prove that the Terminal offered the highest health standards and the necessary expertise for the process to be carried out in our warehouse,” explains Rafael Stein, TCP’s institutional and legal manager.
With the authorization, peanut exporters can now request that MAPA-certified laboratories carry out the sampling process inside the Terminal’s bonded warehouse, after the cargo has been properly gauged, unloaded and positioned by TCP staff.
TCP’s logistics operations manager, Fabio Mattos, explains that, in general, “the process of positioning, unloading and palletizing cargo follows a series of strict rules to prevent any kind of product contamination. The container is scanned at the entrance to the terminal and, after the sample has been taken, the peanuts are stuffed back into the unit and then stored in the operations yard while awaiting release from the laboratory contracted by the client.”
About Beatrice Peanuts
The Beatrice Group is among the largest peanut exporters in Latin America and is the largest in Brazil, accounting for 20% of the volume of the product exported by the country. Combining the most modern seeds, inputs, machinery and agricultural management techniques with the best technologies for processing and selecting grains, Beatrice Peanuts exports between 50 and 55 thousand tons of peanuts a year to more than 50 countries.
