Vale’s coal production up but still failed 2016 target

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Vale’s coal production up but still failed 2016 target

2:28 CAT | 21 Feb 2017

O País

Vale Moçambique extracted about 5.5 million metric tons of coal from its Moatize mine in Tete in 2016, after having produced 5 million metric tons in 2015.

The increase in production results from an improvement of the Moatize I project and the start of a new one called Moatize II, the mining company explains.\

Of the 2016 production, about 3.5 million tons is metallurgical coal and 2.0 million tons, thermal coal.

In the last three months of 2016, mining coal production reached 1.6 million tons, but fell 9.7 percent short of the figure reached in the third quarter of the same year due to a shortage of explosives.

Despite the increase over 2015, 2016 coal production fell short of the target of 10 million tons due to a delay in the start-up of the Moatize II project plant in August 2016 and a shortage of explosives, according to information on the company’s website.

“The supply of explosives has been restored and the performance of operations has continuously improved since, with production of 0.6 million tons in December 2016 and a monthly record of 0.8 million in January 2017,” the site relates.

The volume of coal transported by the company’s trains in the Sena-Beira and Nacala logistics corridors reached 8.8 million tons in 2016, 113 percent more than the 4.1 million tons transported in 2015.

The volume shipped in 2016 totalled 8.7 million tons, 136 percent times the 3.7 million tons shipped in 2015, as a result of improvements in the Nacala Corridor.

“In December 2016, our logistical operations in Mozambique reached historical highs, with a volume of 1,097,000 tons transported and a shipped volume of 1,071,000 tons,” a document summarizing Vale Moçambique’s activity in 2016 says.

Source: O País