During an emotional ceremony, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, Port Authority Director Gabriel Aldoney, and Jose Miguel Urenda, President of Agunsa--concessionaire of the VTP--cut the tape inaugurating South America's most modern cruise ship terminal.

Located in the restored Simon Bolivar Warehouse in the Baron's Wharf sector of the Port of Valparaiso, the VTP required an initial investment of US $2 million dollars, receiving 72,000 passengers and 44 calls during its innaugural season.

 The ceremony was yet another feather in the cap for the six-year-old regional port authority (EPV), created when a new port modernization act eliminated the old state authority (EMPORCHI). In six short years, EPV has bidded out the seven births of the industrial port, bringing more than a US $150 million in investment, while opening up the Baron's wharf to the citizens of Valparaiso and modernizing the logistical operations within the port.

Such investment and modernization has permited the Port of Valparaiso to retain its fruit and container supremacy from the competing port of San Antonio, while simultaneously clearing the way for a new massive waterfront renovation project currently being discussed for the 20-hectare section surround the new passenger terminal in the Baron's Wharf.

As for the VTP, EPV sensed the urgency to bid out rights to develop what would be the most modern cruise ship terminal in South America after 8 years of vertiginous growth in the cruise ship sector.

 Cruise ships first began calling on Valparaiso in the mid-1990's, but passenger demand for what would later be called "The South American Patagonian Route" (a 7-day pendulum swing linking Valparaiso and Buenos Aires, Argentina via the Patagonian fjiords) grew so rapidly that the number of annual calls in Valparaiso grew from six to eleven to eighteen and then to thirty in the first few years alone.

 Although such dazzling growth stagnated temporarily due to the shrinking of the world cruise market in the two years following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the market for the patagonian route quickly recuperated. EPV became the first port in South American to be fully certified for passenger and cargo security. Some fifty vessels are expected for the 2004-2005 season.

 Valparaiso is expected to receive between 80-100 ships a year by 2010.

 The VTP offers complete services ranging from check-in to conference facilities to office space, cafe, arts & crafts, wine, etc. The concession is administered by Agunsa, a major maritime logistics company which operates businesses in more than a dozen countries. Agunsa also owns a controlling stake in SCL, the Santiago International Airport.