The logistics to get 13,000 cars shipped in twelve hours is a choreography in which everything is measured to the millimeter. An example of this dance is lived six or seven times a week in the Bouzas campa in the port of Vigo, a logistics platform focused on the transport of vehicles. This specialization comes from the proximity of the Stellantis factory, which is only four kilometers from the port of Vigo, where 2,300 cars leave a dayapproximately 493,000 cars per year, of which 75% are distributed by sea, 22% by road and the remaining 3% by rail.
From the bridge of the Spica Leader, one of the cargo ships in charge of transporting these vehicles, the 18,000 cars perfectly lined up in the Bouzas field look like a pointillist painting of abstract movement. In part because the ship is almost two hundred meters long and the height of a ten-story building. Everything in the field is measured and programmed. The vehicles arrive there by truck, are unloaded and parked with precision and millimeter precision so that they can then be shipped grouped according to the port of destination. On the windshield, each of the cars has their passport stuck with the country to which they are destined.
At the moment of being shipped, the stevedores come into action, the only people in the port who can touch the merchandise in the process of loading it onto the ship. Some 50 stevedores are involved in driving the 3,000 cars to the ship’s holds, taking turns on an endless carousel of going up, down and up again until the process is completed in 12 hours, with which they leave an average of 60 cars per head.
Cars are constantly entering the Bouzas campa and boats leaving, but everything is under absolute control, none have ever been lost and they rarely spend more than a week waiting for shipment. Most of those 18,000 cars are from Stellantis, but there are also other car manufacturers that arrive by sea or leave by sea. Some destined for the markets of Spain and Portugal come from distant factories and others to other countries and continents. In this terminal, up to 85% of the production of the Stellantis de Vigo factory is stored daily, around 1,900 cars, which are shipped by sea, while the other 15% goes to another field, that of Porriño, which is reserved to supply the Spanish and Portuguese markets and which has a capacity of 7,000 vehicles.
Between 80 and 100 people work in three shifts at the Bouzas terminal. The workers can operate on the cars, but the loading and unloading actions can only be done by the stevedores. In the three work shifts there are, the technicians are in charge of emptying the factory of all the cars produced daily. And the work and logistics are even more complicated because cars are also received from the Mangualde factory in Portugal, some 300 km from Vigo, from Villaverde in Madrid and from the Figueruelas factory in Zaragoza, although these to a lesser extent.
Bouzas is connected to the outside by means of a motorway of the sea, made up of ships, called semi-trailers, a complex device organized by the Suardiaz shipping company that makes it more or less six times a week to pass through the port of Vigo to load cars . These same ships arrive in Vigo with parts from France and cars that also arrive from other factories, and return to France with cars for that market and for northern Europe, England and especially Belgium, which is the largest port for the distribution of cars. Boats also depart from Bouzas heading south, to the Canary Islands, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Italy and Turkey. The necessary logistics are impressive and the observer feels extremely small in the face of such volumes and dimensions. At that time, on the ground, it is easy to understand the importance and economic impact that a car brand can have on a population. More than 15% of Galicia’s GDP is in the Stellantis plant in Vigo.
Half a million a year
At full capacity, the Vigo global plant would easily exceed half a million vehicles produced in a year. The manufacturing record is 550,000 cars in 2007 and the aim is to achieve the absolute record for its capacity, which would be 650,000 units per year, but to achieve this it is necessary to overcome the crisis in the supply of microchips or other parts. At this time the factory is producing one hundred percent, but in the accumulated period from January to May a little more than 100,000 production units were lost, so that 2022, logically, will not be a record year.
For Peugeot, Vigo is one of its world capitals. In 2021, 220,557 Peugeot 2008s were manufactured, of which 12.2% were of the electric version. One of the best-regarded Stellantis global plants for production volume and efficiency, and one of the great bets for the future. One of the secrets of this success is its access to the sea and the spectacular logistics required to take more than half a million cars a year by boat.
Joao Mendes, general director of Peugeot in Spain and Portugal comments with satisfaction: «More than a third of the Peugeots sold in Spain are manufactured in Vigo. Peugeot’s relationship with Vigo dates back to 1977 with the Peugeot 504, then the 505 and so on a few models until reaching 2008 and the e2008, which is exported from Vigo to the rest of the world». The sea is the most important exit door for the production of the Viguesqa Stellantis plant, a factory that is currently working at full capacity.