OREANDA-NEWS. Paranapanema SA, Brazil’s biggest refined copper producer and best stock in the past year, is switching to ships from trucks. While the change almost triples transport times, it cuts costs by 21 percent by eliminating a threat found on Brazilian roads: Thieves.

Paranapanema is transporting 65 percent of its domestic deliveries by ship this year; last year it sent nothing by sea.

The Dias D’Avila, Brazil-based company plans to move 80 percent by water at year’s end after 15 loads were hijacked along roads in 2012, interim Chief Executive Officer Edson Monteiro said.

“There are a lot of trucks stolen, a lot of violence - we invest a lot in security,” he said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro. “Nothing has been done in the past 10 years to improve transportation by roads. Brazil is very weak on this issue.” Companies like Paranapanema are braving port bottlenecks

and longer shipping times to avoid Brazil’s aging highway network, where gangs armed with machine guns and rifles regularly board trucks-either by bribing drivers, using force or even kidnapping family members-and steal goods from copper to food. Almost 1 billion reais (USD 468 million) of cargo was stolen last year on Brazil’s roads, 37 percent more than in 2006, according to the Sao Paulo cargo transport companies’ union, known as Setcesp.