Vale Int Share Discussion Threads

[florenceorbis] 05/9/2019 09:07

Shares in Kibo Energy PLC (KIBO.LN) rose Thursday after the company said it has signed a power-purchase term sheet and a coal-supply term sheet with Vale SA's (VALE) business in Mozambique for its Benga Power Plant Project.

The Africa-focused energy company said the power-purchase term sheet is for an offtake agreement for 37% of the power that it expects to generate in the first phase of the Benga Power Plant Project, in which it holds a 65% stake.

Kibo Energy also said that under the terms of the coal-supply term sheet, Vale will supply the total coal requirement for the plant over its modelled 25-year life.

The signing of the term sheets will pave the way for further integration possibilities between Vale and Kibo Energy, the company said.

Shares at 0813 GMT were up 6.7% at 0.80 pence.



Write to Oliver Griffin at [e-mail]; @OliGGriffin



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 05, 2019 04:32 ET (08:32 GMT)

[waldron] 30/7/2019 05:52

MOTELYFOOL



Iron ore miners tumble: Are Fortescue, BHP and Rio Tinto a buy?

Lina Lim | July 29, 2019 | More on: BHP FMG RIO
Dominoes falling in a row

The iron ore spot price has stabilised around the US$120 per tonne mark while the S&P/ASX 200 (INDEXASX: XJO) index has just passed 6,800. This is in stark contrast to the ASX iron ore miners, which have struggled on the news that the world’s largest miner, Vale SA, would resume production at its Vargem Grade complex.

This news has resulted in the following price movements in the past week:

BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) share price down 1.07% to $40.56 (at time of writing)
Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (ASX: FMG) share price down 4.6% to $8.30 (at time of writing)
Rio Tinto Limited (ASX: RIO) share price down 4% to $98.26 (at time of writing)

Is this a buy opportunity?

The iron ore bull run is perhaps at its cross roads as Vale SA slowly returns to form. The Brazilian miner said that the move to Vargem Grade will add approximately 5 million tonnes to annual production. We’ve known for a long time that Vale has been awaiting supreme court approval for the resumption of production at several mine sites.

Last month, Vale SA received court approval to enable the full resumption of wet processing operations at its Brucutu mine. Brucutu has an annual production capacity of approximately 30 metric tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of iron ore. This represents 8% of Value’s annual output. Fast forward to today, and the Vargem decision will enable the partial resumption of dry processing operations, which will total approximately 5 Mt of additional production in 2019.

If we piece together the initial statistics of the Vale disaster that resulted in a loss of approximately 90 million tonnes of an annualised supply of around 1.7 billion tonnes, it appears as though the market is very slowly coming back to equilibrium.

The plateauing bullish fundamentals overshadow Fortescue’s June 2019 quarterly production report, which highlight a 22% rise in total ore shipped while citing sustained strong demand from customers.
Foolish takeaway

I believe the recent falls in BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue share price are, to some degree, a market overreaction. However, I am going to make the bold call that the top is in for ASX iron ore miners.

On one hand, demand side fundamentals remain robust and the supply–demand imbalance will continue to persist in the short term. But it is evident that the market is slowly creeping back to an equilibrium and I find it highly unlikely that ASX iron ore miners will break out their old highs.

[sarkasm] 28/7/2019 06:59

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?