Brazil's Vale anticipates an increase in iron ore production of up to 3% by 2026

The Brazilian miner Vale announced on Tuesday that it expects iron ore output to increase by up to 3 percent in 2026. It also confirmed it will meet its upper-end 2025 target.

Vale is holding an Investor Day in London and has forecast that its iron ore production will range between 335,000,000 to 345,000,000 metric tons, after having reached about 335,000,000 tons this year.

The company has been working to restore production that was damaged by the fatal 2019 Brumadinho Dam disaster. It hopes to reclaim the title of the world's biggest iron ore producer this year, surpassing Rio Tinto.

Production for 2025 was previously predicted to be between 325 and 335 millions tons.

The filing also showed that Vale maintained its projection of a 360 million ton iron ore production in 2030.

GLENCORE-PARTNERSHIP Vale's BASE METAL FORECASTS estimated that copper production would be between 350,000 and 380,000 tons by 2026, as opposed to about 370,000 tonnes in 2025. The nickel production for next year is projected to be between 175,000 and 200,000 tons compared to 175,000 tons in 2018. Vale Base Metals, a subsidiary of the company, has also signed an agreement with Glencore for a joint evaluation of a brownfield copper project on their adjacent properties within Canada's Sudbury basin.

Vale stated that "after completion of these early works, it is the intention that VBM will transition into a joint venture, as equal partners in this project," Vale added, adding that they expected "significant synergies."

According to the Brazilian company, it is estimated that this project will produce 880,000 tonnes of copper in 21 years at a cost of between $1.6 billion and $2 billion. Reporting by Gabriel Araujo, Marta Nogueira and Bernadette B. Baum, Jan Harvey & Paul Simao

(source: Reuters)