The Suape Industrial Port Complex is in a process of constant expansion. He immediately got the feeling that the area around the port would take off, and that his future lay there. Some 30 years later, Leimig, an electrical engineer specialising in transport, has seen his premonition come true. Today he is one of the directors of the Suape Industrial Port Complex , the motor of the remarkably fast industrialisation process in and around Pernambuco.
But once the ball got rolling, there was no stopping it. Fiat's decision not unwelcome The decision by Italian carmaker Fiat, which decided not to build a new plant in Suape, but in Goiana, km to the north, instead, will help keep the area from becoming too congested, said Daniel Cabral, an adviser to Leimig.
The new 14,hectare site in Goiana will allow Fiat to expand annual production to , vehicles, and will make it possible for car part manufacturers to set up shop there as well, the Italian company said. That is larger than the entire Suape port area, which covers 13, hectares, 59 percent of which is earmarked for environmental preservation. The state government is considering building a new port and an airport in Goiana, to serve the car industry there.
But the Suape port, which played a decisive role in drawing Fiat to Pernambuco in the first place, will still be important for the company's operations. In the space of just a few years, more than companies have set up shop in the area, and over 30 are still busy building their factories, including a refinery and three petrochemical plants. Just a month ago there were a total of 70, employees, said the director of Suape Global, a multisectoral forum that aims to transform the port into an international oil, gas, offshore and shipbuilding equipment and services supply complex.
The local population and authorities, after waiting so long for the influx of industries drawn by the port, were caught off guard by how fast their dream of development and industrial growth has been coming true. There was neither time nor financing to adapt the roads, designed to serve an economy based largely on tourism, to the traffic of thousands of heavy vehicles a day, or to prepare the city for the flood of workers from all around the country.
