By Brazil Stock Guide – Brazil plans to kick off construction of the long-awaited Santos-Guarujá undersea tunnel in early February, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva set to attend a ceremony marking the start of works, according to the country’s ports and airports minister.
The groundbreaking event is expected to take place between Feb. 2 and Feb. 10, when the government will issue the formal notice to proceed for the project, one of the flagship infrastructure investments under Brazil’s New Growth Acceleration Program, known as the Novo PAC.
The tunnel is designed to transform logistics and mobility in the Baixada Santista region by creating a direct road link between Santos and Guarujá. The connection is expected to significantly ease congestion and speed up access to the Port of Santos, Latin America’s busiest container hub and a critical gateway for Brazilian exports.
Auctioned in September 2025, the project will be delivered through a 30-year public-private partnership between the federal government and the state of São Paulo. Once completed, the crossing time between the two coastal cities is expected to drop to about five minutes, compared with up to 18 minutes by ferry or roughly an hour via existing road routes.
The tunnel will be the first immersed undersea tunnel built in Brazil and, once completed, the largest of its kind in Latin America. The design includes three traffic lanes in each direction, one of them reserved for a future light-rail system, as well as a dedicated cycle path, pedestrian walkway and a technical gallery for public utility networks.
Construction will rely on the immersed-tube method, widely used in countries such as the Netherlands, Japan and China. Under this approach, large prefabricated concrete sections are built on land and then submerged and installed on the seabed, rather than excavated through rock. The development is classified as a greenfield project, with demand projections based on future traffic flows.
The winning bidder was Portugal’s Mota-Engil SGPS SA (Euronext Lisbon: EGL), which is partly owned by China Communications Construction Co. (Hong Kong: 1800). While Mota-Engil has limited experience with immersed tunnels, it will draw on the technical expertise of its Chinese partner, which has delivered large-scale projects such as the Shenzhen–Zhongshan Link and the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau bridge-tunnel system.
Mota-Engil offered a 0.5% discount on the annual public payment of 438 million reais set out in the tender documents. Government payments will begin once the tunnel enters operation and will be jointly funded by the federal government and the state of São Paulo. Spain’s Acciona SA (Madrid: ANA), currently building São Paulo’s Line 6-Orange metro line, also bid for the project but did not offer a discount.
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