Brazil Vale Intends Alumina Plant In North

RIO DE JANEIRO -(Dow Jones)- Brazilian mining giant Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (RIO) intends to build an alumina refinery in northern Brazil, not Espirito Santo state, the company’s press office told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that Vale CEO Roger Agnelli informed him of the company’s intentions at a meeting on economic development in Brasilia.

According to Vale spokesman Fernando Thompson, Agnelli first divulged the miner’s plans to Lula last month at a ceremony marking the expansion of Vale’s Alunorte smelter and refinery. At the time, Agnelli told Lula that the company intended to build a refinery to process bauxite into alumina in the north of Brazil.

Thompson attributed the confusion over the site of the alumina refinery to a misunderstanding of Lula’s comments by local press.

Brazil’s northern region would make logistical sense for a new refinery, given that’s where the company’s world-class bauxite mines are located. Vale is one of the world’s leading producers of bauxite, the raw material that is refined and smelted to manufacture aluminum.

Vale’s current main project in Espirito Santo remains a steel slab plant near Anchieta, under construction as a joint venture with Chinese steel titan Baosteel.