The wait is over and the plant UPM Paso de los Toros will finally be able to load an entire ship of 50,000 tons of cellulose – of which 20,000 correspond to him and the rest come from the Fray Bentos plant – which will leave through the Port of Montevideo.
The UPM 2 plant finally took its first load for a shipment departing from the Port of Montevideo, through an alternative road transport system to link its new plant in Paso de los Toros with the port. The company is still waiting for the restoration of central railway, whose date was postponed again and its inauguration is no longer expected in May, but only in October or November of this year, which raises the costs of the product.
Added to this is the fact that, once the work on the Central Railroad is finished, it will be able to lead directly to the port terminal specialized in cellulose – inaugurated in October last year -, which will reduce logistics costs and time. The work cost the Finnish company 280 million dollars.
The keys to UPM II
According to company forecasts, will reach a pulp production of up to 2.1 million tons per year, increasing annual production by 50% to reach 2,066 million dollars, which will allow the location of Uruguay among the world’s leading exporters of the product.
This will have an effect on the Uruguayan economy, increasing GDP by 2%, which would help Uruguay in a forecast loss of 3% due to the drought. In that sense, what would 290 million dollars of salaries net per year In this sense, it is estimated $280 million in taxes and social security contributions by year.
On the other hand, they generated 7,000 jobsin direct jobs between UPM and contractors, while 10,000 more were added through induced positions in the value chain.
While from the company they explain that they will generate more than 160 MW of surplus renewable energy that would go to the national network. As they also argue that environmental impact monitoring was carried out for more than two years with more than 600,000 monthly environmental monitoring dataenvironmental organizations are against it.
The environmental cons
He Observatory of Multinationals in Latin America (OMAL) issued a report in which it assured that there will be contamination “even keeping the emission levels within the limits that they themselves set.” “The accumulation of pollutants will transform the region with severe losses in the quality of life, land depreciation and economic ventures, and deterioration of the health of the inhabitants of the region,” they detailed.
In 2006, Argentina appeared before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for the installation by the Uruguayan Government of the first European pulp mill on the Uruguay River, shared with Argentina. Since then, neighbors and the Environmental Citizen Assembly of Gualeguaychú have carried out marches and activities, and will carry out the next sunday april 30 a new mobilization to the General San Martín international bridge.
Source: Ambito
