Hold Cleaning in Brazil

33 ports across the whole coast — the southern grain and container range at Santos, Paranaguá, Rio Grande, São Francisco do Sul and Itapoã; the iron ore and steel terminals at Tubarão, Ponta da Madeira, Praia Mole, Sepetiba and Itaguaí; and the northern and Amazon terminals at Itaqui, Barcarena, Vila do Conde, Santarém and Itacoatiara.

Two things. First, the trade: Brazil loads grain, soya and sugar in enormous volume, and those are food-grade fixtures with surveyor-attended inspections where a failure means the vessel sits. Second, the waiting: anchorage queues at the grain ports run long in the harvest season, and that waiting time is the single best cleaning window a bulk carrier gets — a gang put on board during it costs no schedule at all.

Yes, and they are opposite problems. Ore fines stain and pack into frames and tank-top margins and need chemical treatment and rinsing, not sweeping. Grain and soya are about dryness, absence of infestation and absence of any prior residue — a hold that is visually clean but damp will still fail. The sequence is built from the pair: what came out, and what is going in.

Yes, and on the long ballast legs out of Brazil it is usually the better answer. The crew embarks at the load or discharge port, works the holds at sea across a passage the vessel is making anyway, and disembarks at a nominated port — so the cleaning costs no port time. Visas, tickets and clearances are handled as part of the job.

To MARPOL Annex V, through the reception route agreed with the port and terminal before the gang boards. Brazilian ports enforce this seriously and the documentation matters, so residues and washing water are tracked from hold to reception with a record the vessel keeps.

Not yet. We publish port pages where we can say something specific and true about the local conditions, the approving authority and the traffic — that exists for our Indian and UAE coverage today and is being built for Brazil. In the meantime, tell us the port and the fixture and we will answer directly rather than point you at a generic page.