AD Ports closes USD 835 mn CLI agreement and plans to ship Brazilian farm exports straight to Abu Dhabi

AD Ports closed its USD 835 mn acquisition of Brazilian agri-bulk terminal operator CLI, and it plans to use the terminals to ship Brazilian farm exports directly to Abu Dhabi. Port regulator Antaq and competition authority Cade signed off on the agreement, and the group's Noatum Ports arm has taken over operations, AD Ports said in a press release. It is the group's largest acquisition to date and its first in South America.

AD Ports now has a sugar terminal in the south and a grain gateway in the north. AD Ports bought 100% of CLI Norte at Itaqui and an 80% stake in CLI Sul at Santos from funds managed by Macquarie Asset Management and IG4 Capital. The Santos terminal also handles corn and soybeans.

The wager is on Itaqui: Northern Brazil is one of the country’s fastest-growing export corridors as agricultural producers look for shorter, more efficient routes to global markets, and CLI Norte sits on it.

Itaqui is the growth play: CLI Norte sits on Brazil's northern export corridor, one of the country's fastest-growing, as farmers look for shorter, more efficient routes to global markets.

Why it matters: AD Ports holds infrastructure at both ends of a Brazil-to-Gulf food trade lane. The group says its next step is to set up trade routes linking Brazil directly with Khalifa Port and the Abu Dhabi Food Hub in Kezad. It also sees CLI feeding Brazilian farm exports into its wider network across the Indian Subcontinent, East Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Brazilian grain will have somewhere to go

The grain complex at Khalifa Port is the closest match for what CLI ships. AD Ports signed a 50-year land lease with Emirates Food Industries group last year for an AED 2 bn grain storage and processing complex at Khalifa Port. Its first phase includes silos with around 150k tons of storage and direct access to deepwater berths, with a processing plant planned later.

Next door, Kezad is building the Abu Dhabi Food Hub to process and distribute what arrives. The firm broke ground on the 3.3 sq km Abu Dhabi Food Hub in 2023 as part of an AED 330 mn infrastructure package.

DP World got to Brazil first

DP World has been in Brazil since 2013 and is still expanding at Santos. It invested more than USD 555 mn in the country and committed another USD 296 mn last December to add capacity at Santos.

It is also building a farm cargo terminal at Santos with railway operator Rumo. The grain and fertilizer terminal is designed to add 12.5 mn tons of annual handling capacity, split between 9 mn tons of grain and 3.5 mn tons of fertilizer. That puts both of the UAE's big port groups in Santos, handling Brazil's farm exports.