AD Ports closes $835m purchase of Santos and Itaqui grain terminals in Brazil
Can AD Ports earn back 8.5 times earnings on leases with about ten years left?
What the completion notices left out: when the leases at Santos and Itaqui end, how the berths are shared, and who owns the railways that feed both terminals.
AD Ports has closed its $835 million purchase of two sugar and grain export terminals in Brazil. Both are leases inside public ports, and the cargo reaches them on other companies' railways. So what the deal is worth depends on getting the leases extended and on how much the trains deliver.
AD Ports Group, the Abu Dhabi port operator, said on 2 October that it has completed its purchase of CLI, a Brazilian operator of sugar and grain export terminals. The price was $835 million, its largest acquisition. CLI works two sites: Santos, Brazil's largest port, and Itaqui, on the northern coast. Both are leases inside public ports, and both are fed by railways that belong to other companies.
An export terminal sells tonnes over the quay. The tonnage depends on how fast cargo arrives, how fast the ship loads and how often the berth is free. AD Ports now controls the second of those. In August CLI started a new shiploader at Santos that lifts the loading rate from 6,500 to 7,500 tonnes an hour.
The cargo for that loader arrives on someone else's trains. AD Ports holds 80% of the Santos operation. Rumo, the Brazilian rail operator that sold the terminals to CLI in 2022, kept the other 20%. Rumo is also one of three railways that jointly run the tracks inside the port.
At Itaqui the grain comes up a railway run by VLI, another rail operator, and finishes on a line owned by the mining company Vale. The berth is shared too. CLI is one of four lessees using two berths, and the other three belong to grain trading groups.
So the money buys loading speed, and it buys it for a fixed term. AD Ports' announcements call these "long-term concessions" and give no end dates. The Santos lease runs to 6 March 2036. The Itaqui lease ends in 2037.
Set those dates against the price. CLI made $98 million of EBITDA in 2025, and the price is about 8.5 times that. A multiple of that size is hard to recover in ten years, so the purchase reads as a bet on extensions.
In Brazil an extension is bought with investment, and Itaqui shows the rate. The four lessees there offered R$1.16 billion for a third berth and asked for a term to 2062. The ports ministry approved the plan in November 2024. The waterway transport regulator had still to rule.
Santos is where the same trade has yet to appear. The signal to watch is a filing: a request to extend the Santos lease, with the investment attached to it. Until then, AD Ports has paid 8.5 times earnings for about ten years at Santos.
Primary sources
- officialAD Ports Group Successfully Completes Acquisition of Brazil's CLI Upon Receiving Full Regulatory Approvals AD Ports Group, 2026-10-02
- officialAD Ports Group Acquires CLI, Brazil's Leading Agri-Bulk Port Terminal Operator, for over AED 3 Billion AD Ports Group, 2026-06-02
- officialCLI anuncia aquisição de controle de terminais de grãos e açúcar da Rumo no Porto de Santos Rumo, 2022-07-21
- officialFIPS inicia a gestão da ferrovia interna do Porto de Santos Rumo, 2023-10-03
