Jan de Nul wins contract to dig Argentina’s US$10-billion waterway

Belgian dredger Jan de Nul NV and local partner Servimagnus SA won a 25-year contract on Thursday from Argentina’s government to upgrade the nation’s chief trade route in a concession overshadowed by accusations of Chinese influence. 

Jan de Nul, which has dredged the Paraná River shipping lane since the 1990s, beat a bid from fellow Belgian company DEME Group NV. The waterway runs from the River Plate estuary at Buenos Aires to the crop-export hub of Rosario and beyond. Rosario was the world’s largest single supplier of oilseeds and grains last year.

The tender became a flashpoint in broader US-China geopolitical tensions in Latin America as Argentine President Javier Milei has aligned with the Trump administration on other issues. What on paper looked like innocuous competition between two Belgian dredgers snowballed into a match-up between DEME’s American partners portraying Jan del Nul’s consortium as a group backed by China. 

Jan de Nul and Servimagnus repeatedly denied the DEME consortium’s allegations of Chinese influence, which were brought to the Trump administration to no avail.  

Fulfilling the contract, tendered by Milei’s administration as part of its push to modernise infrastructure through private investment, will require about US$10 billion of spending to deepen and improve the river channel.

At stake is a critical artery for Argentina’s economy. About 80 percent of the country’s oilseed and grain exports move along the Paraná, and agriculture remains Argentina’s largest export sector, accounting for roughly 60 percent of foreign sales, even as oil has begun to play a bigger role.

The contract has been years in the making. Jan de Nul’s previous concession expired in 2021, but Argentina’s government at the time failed to complete a replacement tender. The company remained in place under temporary extensions, a system that traders said contributed to inefficiencies and higher river tolls. 

Milei’s administration launched a new auction last year that included plans to expand the shipping lane, but the process was scrapped after allegations of favouritism toward Jan de Nul emerged.

A central feature of the contract is a long-awaited deepening of the shipping lane to Rosario. The depth would increase to 40 feet from 36 feet, with provisions for studying whether it can eventually reach 44 feet.

That will revamp a crucial trade corridor in a region where China has been making inroads for years, but where the United States, under President Donald Trump, has taken renewed interest and found an ally in Milei. The sparring played out as DEME, backed by US investors including KKR & Co, made a point of highlighting to US government officials Servimagnus’ past ties to China in Argentina. 

In recent years, drought has exposed weakness in the waterway. Mariners have had to navigate a channel with narrow passages and shifting draft conditions that increase costs, delay shipments and occasionally leave vessels stranded.

The expansion is expected to improve the competitiveness of Argentina’s crop industry by allowing more soy meal, the nation’s largest single export, to be loaded upriver. That would reduce the need for costly top-offs at Atlantic ports before vessels depart for overseas markets.

Milei’s government is planning for the upgraded waterway, combined with lower export tariffs, to spur farm production. While Argentina remains an agricultural heavyweight, producers have struggled with logistical bottlenecks and taxes that have eroded their competitiveness against rivals in Brazil, where farm output has expanded steadily for decades.