Vale Int Share Discussion Threads

[sarkasm] 28/7/2019 07:59

As electric vehicle production ramps up worldwide, a supply crunch for battery materials is looming

Published Fri, Jul 26 2019 12:55 AM EDT
Stella Soon
@stellasjy




Key Points

As car manufacturers ramp up production of electric cars, metals used to make the vehicles’ batteries may face a supply crunch by the mid-2020s, according to a Wood Mackenzie report released Wednesday.

Lithium, cobalt, and nickel supplies are expected to be worst hit.



As car manufacturers ramp up production of electric cars, the metals used to make the vehicles’ batteries may face a supply crunch in the next few years, according to a new report.

Lithium, cobalt, and nickel supplies are expected to be worst hit, the Wednesday report from energy consulting and research firm Wood Mackenzie. That’s as analysts predict a boom in electric vehicle use over the next three decades, but cite limited new metal production.

For now, supplies of those three metals are enough to meet demand, according to Gavin Montgomery, research director at Wood Mackenzie. But short-term market prices of those metals have fallen, and that will deter producers from increasing supply to meet future demand, he added.

In fact, in the next few years, demand for the metals is expected to grow so rapidly — as car producers make more electric vehicles — that suppliers won’t be able to keep up, Montgomery noted.

Montgomery isn’t the only one predicting a future supply crunch.


“It’s dawning on North America and Europe that there’s a raw materials issue that needs to be addressed here,” leading metals company CleanTeQ’s chief executive officer, Sam Riggall, told Bloomberg in early July.

Furthermore, limited amounts of lithium, cobalt, and nickel exist on Earth, so there may simply not be enough to meet car manufacturers’ future demand.

“Getting the quantity of nickel that (electric vehicles) will need by the mid-2020s will be a challenge ... with lead times often up to 10 years, investment needs to happen now,” said Montgomery.

Car buyers’ shifting tastes partly explain why manufacturers are demanding more of those metals. Customers have been turning toward electric vehicles, rather than traditional gasoline-powered ones, in recent years.


In 2018, global electric vehicle sales were up 64% from 2017, sales database EV-volumes.com found.

Wood Mackenzie said it expects electric vehicle sales to continue rising. In fact, by 2025, electric vehicles will make up 7% of all passenger car sales, according to Montgomery. By 2040, that figure will hit 38%, he predicted.

Currently, electric vehicles only make up 0.5% of the world’s vehicle fleet, Bloomberg estimated in a 2019 forecast. But, as Montgomery predicted, “most automotive manufacturers plan to go completely electric by 2050.”

Despite the predictions of a supply crunch for the likes of nickel, lithium and cobalt, the global supply for graphite and manganese, two other metals required for electric vehicle batteries, is expected to be sufficient.

[grupo] 01/2/2019 06:56

SÃO PAULO -- Brazilian mining giant Vale SA hopes to sign a deal with the state of Minas Gerais soon so it can start paying damages to the victims of the collapse last week of a tailings dam owned by the company.

The dam, which burst on Jan. 25, has claimed at least 110 lives, with 238 more missing and feared dead, civil-defense authorities said Thursday.

Vale Chief Executive Officer Fabio Schvartsman said Thursday it is too soon to know how much the damages might amount to. The accident took place in Minas Gerais, and that is where the legal process will play out, Mr. Schvartsman told reporters after a meeting in Brazil's capital with the federal government's top prosecutor, Raquel Dodge.

"We're ready to skip the lawsuits, seeking an agreement as quickly as possible with the authorities of Minas Gerais, allowing Vale to begin the process immediately," he said.

The tailings dam's collapse in the small Brazilian town of Brumadinho released a torrent of muddy mining waste that swept away offices and a crowded lunchroom nearby belonging to Vale. The company has said that most of the victims worked either directly or indirectly for Vale.

Investors and analysts are watching the investigation and the legal process closely to try to determine how much the disaster will cost the company, though it will likely take years to determine the total amount. Vale's shares plunged almost 25% on Monday, the first day of trading after the accident, but have since regained some of that ground.

Brazilians have been riveted by the frequently televised efforts of rescue workers to locate victims' corpses and by the death toll, and the country's lawmakers, regulators and justice system have been quick to propose new legislation, impose fines and investigate the causes of the tragedy.

A spokesman for rescue workers said that locating and identifying the bodies are getting more difficult because the corpses have started to decay and many of them are buried under more mud than the ones they have already found.

The Brazilian government plans to streamline an application process for environmental licenses, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said Thursday.

Vale has also taken additional actions to give financial aid to families affected by the disaster. The company said earlier this week it would make a donation of 100,000 reais ($27,500) to the families of people who are dead or missing following the dam's collapse, and on Thursday Vale started taking information from family members. The minimum wage in Brazil is 988 reais ($275) a month.

Write to Jeffrey T. Lewis at [e-mail] and Paulo Trevisani at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 31, 2019 17:50 ET (22:50 GMT)

[waldron] 30/1/2019 16:03

SAO PAULO--Shares of Brazilian iron-ore giant Vale SA (VALE3.BR, VALE) jumped Wednesday after the company announced a plan to dismantle all the tailings dams it owns that are similar to the one that burst last Friday, killing scores and leaving hundreds more missing and feared dead.

The death toll in the accident, which took place in the small, rural town of Brumadinho, rose to 84 by Tuesday evening, and close to another 300 people are unaccounted for. Rescue workers say there's little chance any of the people still buried under the thick layer of reddish-brown mud left behind by the accident are still alive. The search continues and the number of dead is expected to rise rapidly over coming days after more rescuers have arrived to help.

Vale Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman announced Tuesday evening that the company will accelerate its plan to dismantle 10 dams while halting all mining activity near them. The plan will cost about 5 billion reais ($1.3 billion), halt about 10% of its annual production and take one to three years to complete, Mr. Schvartsman said. The company also said it will increase output at other facilities to offset the loss of production.

Vale shares rose 8.2% shortly after the open to 46.26 reais. The company's stock price plummeted on Monday, losing almost one-quarter of its value, then rose almost 1% on Tuesday.

"We believe the decommissioning of these dams is a prudent move by Vale; reducing the risk of another dam collapse is well worth the $1.3 billion Vale will spend to decommission these structures," said Christopher LaFemina, an analyst at Jefferies, in a note.

The company had already stopped using the type of dam that collapsed Friday in Brumadinho, known as an upstream dam, about three years ago after a similar dam about 80 miles away in a town called Mariana burst, killing 19 people and spewing a river of mining waste that contaminated hundreds of miles of river valleys.

Upstream dams are cheaper to build than other types, but also more prone to failure, according to experts. After the Mariana accident, Vale began the process of decommissioning, or dismantling, the 19 upstream dams it owned at the time, and had already decommissioned nine of them by the time of the Brumadinho disaster, according to Mr. Schvartsman.

Mr. Schvartsman said the company didn't carry out the process more quickly because safety audits of the dams showed them to be in good condition.

Write to Jeffrey T. Lewis at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 30, 2019 07:44 ET (12:44 GMT)

[la forge] 26/1/2019 16:30

too true

mj you could have asked a question by giving information and your take on the company

and the requested comments and opinions

basically ITS HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE


LOL
Certainly you did make a friend nor influence Ariane

[mjolnir69] 26/1/2019 15:53

Any thoughts, points for discussion etc rather than keep posting just news articles we can all see anyway?

[waldron] 22/1/2019 06:42

SYDNEY--BHP Group Ltd. (BHP.AU) recorded weaker quarterly production of commodities including iron ore and petroleum and forecast a first-half productivity hit totaling US$600 million because of disruptions to operations that included a train derailment in a remote part of Australia.

The company also raised its full-year forecast for copper production after it called off the sale of its Cerro Colorado copper mine in Chile.

BHP, the world's biggest miner by market value, on Tuesday said it produced 58 million metric tons of iron ore in the three months through December, down 6% on the same period a year earlier.

In November, BHP was forced to derail a runaway train consisting of four locomotives and 268 loaded wagons that ran loose for more than 50 miles without a driver. The train rolled away after its operator disembarked to inspect one of the wagons and didn't secure a brake.

BHP temporarily suspended all of its rail operations in the Pilbara to investigate the incident and recover the rogue train.

The derailment helped to prop up iron-ore prices, which have been trading above analyst expectations as China continues to produce massive amounts of steel. China's steel-product output rose 8.5% last year.

BHP's Australian iron-ore shipments account for almost one-fifth of seaborne trade in the commodity. It is the world's third-largest iron-ore exporter, behind Vale SA (VALE) and Rio Tinto PLC (RIO.LN).

BHP said its productivity drive, aimed at working its mines and infrastructure network harder, had also been set back in the half by a plant outage at its Olympic Dam copper mine in Australia and a plant fire at its Spence mine in Chile.

BHP meantime raised its full-year copper production forecast to between 1.645 million tons and 1.740 million tons to reflect the retention of Cerro Colorado. It reported a 2% rise in second-quarter copper output, to 416,000 tons.

The company also recorded a sharp fall in quarterly petroleum production tied to lower gas sales. It said second-quarter output of petroleum products fell by 8% to 30 million barrels of oil equivalent.



Write to Rhiannon Hoyle at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 21, 2019 17:19 ET (22:19 GMT)

[la forge] 05/12/2018 17:44

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Local News

Vale and Glencore sign joint study for Sudbury project
Mining companies announce agreement to look into resource accessibility from Nickel Rim South Mine
6
42 m by: Northern Ontario Business Staff
Nickel Rim MineVale and Glencore have announced a joint feasibility study into accessing deposits bordering both companies' properties using infrastructure in Glencore's Nickel Rim South Mine.

Sudbury's two major mining companies are jointly studying if they can access nearby resources from an active mine, northeast of the city, to extend its operating life.

Vale and Glencore announced on Dec. 4 they have initiated a feasibility study to explore the possibility of mining resources from the existing workings of Glencore’s Nickel Rim South Mine.

The study will examine the economic and technical aspects of using the existing shaft and infrastructure at the mine, as well as additional underground infrastructure, to potentially jointly develop and mine deposits in close proximity to each other.

This includes Vale’s Victor property and a shared deposit which exists adjacent to the boundary between each company’s properties.

“A joint approach could allow for resources to be unlocked that would likely not otherwise be productive,” said Ricus Grimbeek, chief operating officer for Vale’s North Atlantic Operations and Asian Refineries, in a news release.

Among the other benefits is job creation, Grimbeek added.

This feasibility study comes at a time when the economic outlook for nickel and copper looks promising.

Currently, Nickel Rim South is slated to close in 2022.

Peter Xavier, vice-president of Glencore’s Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations, said this study has multiple benefits to the potential of coming together to mine deposits using existing infrastructure.

“The potential opportunity not only preserves significant capital for other future mining opportunities at Glencore, but also would create shareholder and economic value in the Sudbury Basin,” he said.

A joint approach to the study is an extension of the parties’ past collaboration in the Sudbury Basin.

It is expected that the feasibility study will take approximately a year to complete.

[grupo guitarlumber] 04/12/2018 20:14

Vale, Glencore to jointly explore for nickel in Canada
By Frederico Barbosa
Tuesday, December 4, 2018

[grupo guitarlumber] 25/10/2018 08:40

SÃO PAULO--Brazilian iron ore giant Vale SA said its net income declined in the third quarter from a year earlier because of the effect of the weaker Brazilian real on dollar-denominated debt.

The company reported a net income of $1.37 billion in the third quarter, compared with net income of $2.24 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Net operating revenue increased to $9.54 billion in the quarter, from $9.05 billion a year earlier. Operating income rose in the quarter, to $3.27 billion, from $3.02 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Vale's sales are benefiting from an increase in demand for higher quality, and higher priced, products, which are cleaner to process. The company is increasing output of them just as the Chinese government is pushing steel plants to cut pollution.

Vale is "a clear beneficiary of high-grade demand, and their position in the market is in the sweet spot," said Christopher LaFemina, an analyst at Jefferies.

The company has been boosting output of pellets, which have a high concentration of iron, and the restart of its São Luis pellet plant helped push pellet production to a new record. Vale also is ramping up output at its giant S11D mine, which produces high-quality iron ore.

Underlying earnings, which Vale says is a better measure of its performance than net income because it excludes exchange rate effects, was little changed at $2.06 billion in the third quarter versus $2.09 billion a year ago.

Adjusted earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization from continuing operations increased to $4.37 billion in the third quarter from $4.19 billion in the same period a year earlier.



Write to Jeffrey T. Lewis at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 24, 2018 18:38 ET (22:38 GMT)