September 19, 2008

On September 17, the construction of Noble Group's first grain and sugar export terminal in the port city of Santos, Brazil that is expected to be fully operational by November 2009, was completed.

The facility has static warehousing capacity for 90,000 thousand tonnes of sugar, or 73,000 thousand tonnes of grain, the company said. It also will have a ship loader with a capacity of 3,000 tonnes per hour.

This new terminal enables the company to gain greater control of the trade flows from the production fields to destination markets such as China, Europe and Middle East. Noble currently owns 75 percent of the terminal and Noble's partner, Itamaraty, owns the remaining 25 percent.

The new Santos terminal offers improved efficiencies over other local ports and allows Noble to generate greater economies of scale and important synergies for both their grain and sugar businesses, said Noble Group CEO Richard Elmanm.