vale an iron grip on the market century of mining activities. To improve biodiversity within the community, Vale undertakes a number of activities, including: • Growing more than 300,000 trees annually in its greenhouse for planting throughout the City of Greater Sudbury. • Investing $250,000 and donating 50,000 tree seedlings annually to the City of Greater Sudbury’s Biodiversity Action Plan. • Promoting pollination by raising bees on its smelter property along Highway 55 in Sudbury and planting milkweed for monarch butterflies, which are great pollinators. • Seeding hundreds of acres each year by air through an aerial seeding program that has reclaimed approximately 8,000 acres since 1990. • Raising and releasing more than 100,000 fish to date into local waterways through a comprehensive fish-stocking program. “We congratulate Vale for their outstanding projects,” said Pierre Gratton, President and CEO, MAC. “They showcase what best practice looks like in our sector, whether it be spurring local economic development and entrepreneurship in communities where they operate or adopting innovative methods to restore mining areas back to nature.”
Coal
“At the Brucutu mine in Minas Gerais Vale has been trialling a system of autonomous trucks, controlled not by humans in the cab but by computer systems, GPS, radars and artificial intelligence”
Vale conducts its coal operations primarily in Mozambique, through Vale Moçambique. The company also has a minority interest in a Chinese coal producer. Of the two main types of coal, metallurgical coal is used in steel production, while thermal coal is used to generate heat and power in thermal power plants. Vale is ramping up both its metallurgical and thermal coal operations in Mozambique. The Moatize Mine has been producing coal since July 2011, and represents Vale’s biggest investment within the sector. One of the biggest challenges there is logistics, however, where Vale has invested in two railroads to connect to ports - Sena and Nacala Corridor – in order to transport the mine’s output.
The Nacala Corridor project will connect the Moatize Coal Mine to the Port of Nacala-a-Velha on the Nampula coast, with a transport capacity of 18 million metric tonnes of coal per year. This 912 kilometre long line includes a 237-kilometre stretch that passes through neighbouring Malawi. Already in operation, the 575-kilometre Sena Railroad connects Moatize to the Port of Beira, in the south of Mozambique, with a transport capacity of 6 million metric tonnes of coal per year. In 2017 Vale sold 50 per cent of its stake in the Nacala Logistics Corridor (NLC) and at the same time 15 per cent of its stake in the Moatize Mine to Japanese conglomerate Mitsui. In September this year Mozambique’s Cimentos de Maiaia awarded Vale the contract for its coal supply with an initial deal for 600tpa of thermal coal. “Every quarter we will take about 200t, and after a year of this contract we shall increase our capacity to use coal from Vale,” said the managing director of Cimentos de Maiaia, Chunjie Gou. The cement producer’s plant in Nacala Special Economic Zone was inaugurated three months ago and it is expected that the new coal supply agreement will reduce production costs. The coal will be delivered to the cement plant along the Nacala Logistics Corridor (CLN). The CLN is handling 1.3Mtpm, mainly for export. Since the line started operations some 30 months ago, it has exported over 20Mt of coal. When the line is in full operation, coal exports are expected to increase by 40 per cent. This will have a direct impact on the Moatize mine, which will be able to increase its production to 18 million tonnes a year, as well as reduce its transportation costs from mine to port. According to Vale, coal production at Moatize rose from 3.7 million tonnes in 2012 to 11.3 million tonnes in 2017.
Australia
Vale entered the Australian coal market in 2007 with the purchase of the Integra Coal Complex in New South Wales and Carborough Downs underground mine in central Queensland from AMCI Holdings. Operations at the Integra Coal complex were placed into care and maintenance in July 2014, however, as it was considered World Mining Magazine www.ogsmag.com
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