In 1901 João Gerdau was an entrepreneur with a dream when he acquired the Pontas de Paris Nail Factory in Porto Alegre, Brazil. More than a hundred years later Gerdau is a steel conglomerate with a presence in 14 countries, including 140 locations in North America, employing more than 11,500 people in the United States and Canada.
Each year Gerdau transforms millions of tons of scrap into quality steel products. They are leading the production of long steel in the Americas and are one of the largest suppliers of long steel in world. They are also producers of a specialized grinding media instrumental in the mineral mining process — grinding balls.
Gerdau’s grinding balls are high-carbon forged steel balls designed for use in autogenous and semi-autogenous grinding mills to break and/or grind ore into fine particles or smaller pieces. This process is useful in construction and structural refilling.
Recently Gerdau selected the Port of New Orleans as its supply chain partner in collaboration with CN Railway to ship the grinding balls. The heavy metal balls are arriving via rail from Duluth, Minnesota, packaged in super sacks and then loaded onto vessels at the Port of New Orleans Nashville Avenue Terminal (Ports America). They are then shipped on a regular service shipping carrier directly to Callao, Peru, to Gerdau affiliate Empresa Siderurgica Del Peru in Lima, Peru.
“We chose the Port of New Orleans because it is a very important hub for intermodal,” says Lucas Soutto Mayor A. Nicolau, Chartering Executive for Gerdau. “We can use barge, rail — very fast transit time to Midwest — and a wide range of truck companies.”
The intricate transport of the grinding balls packaged in super sacks requires a team effort between CN Railway and the Port.
“The balls are very heavy and required switching to stronger sacks,” says David Scoggin, Business Development Manager at CN Railway. “Ports America assisted in providing higher quality bags for the railcar to vessel transload.”
Currently Gerdau is shipping 10 containers of the super sacks of grinding balls a month but Nicolau sees this increasing in the near future.
“In New Orleans we are able to easily get empty containers, so when we have exports, we do not have problems with lack of equipment,” says Nicolau. “We did not face problems with congestion or closure due to winter months. This way our processes do not stop and we have had no delays.”
Super sacks containing grinding balls are transloaded from railcar to vessel.
Sacks being offloaded for delivery to Gerdau affiliate Empresa Siderurgica Del Peru.
