Vale CEO Gustavo Pimenta Talks Global Metals Market

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
It is one of the big narratives of the last year, a signature policy of the second term of the Trump administration, and that is shoring up supplies of critical minerals and commodities including iron ore, pellets, copper and nickel. It's become, Tim, though, really a focus for countries and governments around the world.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:24)
On that, we're gonna head to the Bloomberg News Bureau in Rio de Janeiro, and to one of the co-hosts of Bloomberg Surveillance, Lisa Abramowicz, sitting down with the CEO of one of the world's largest mining companies, Gustavo Pimenta, the CEO of Vale. Lisa, take it away.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (0:40)
Thank you so much, Tim, Carol. I am here in our beautiful Rio office with Gustavo Pimenta, the CEO of Vale, the world's biggest iron ore miner, and one of the biggest ore miners just in general around the world. At this critical time, as Tim and Carol were just talking about, there has been this rush to any kind of critical minerals and to secure it for security reasons as well as the infrastructure build out. How much more demand have you seen just recently?

**Gustavo Pimenta** (1:05)
Look, the amount of demand, first of all, good to see you, Lisa. The amount of demand is super constructive. It's historical for us, I think, across all the critical minerals we are seeing and a very strong support from clients all over the world, from countries in terms of looking for security of supply.
Iron ore continues to be strong. If you look at copper, nickel, so across the board, we are seeing tremendous amount of demand for all of the mining that we produce.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (1:33)
The bulk of your customers typically come from China. Have you seen more interest recently from the United States?

**Gustavo Pimenta** (1:39)
We are.
China continues to be a strong market for us, very relevant for everything we do, but we are seeing growth outside China. We are seeing growth in Southeast Asia. We are seeing growth in the US, Europe. So there is a diversification going on these days with other markets looking to amplify their access to critical minerals.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (1:58)
People talk about a commodity supercycle. Iron ore hasn't participated as much in terms of the price gains and there has been a sort of plateauing in demand from China. Where are the growth opportunities specifically when it comes to iron ore?

**Gustavo Pimenta** (2:11)
So we continue to be very optimistic about iron ore. If you step back and look at the overall demand, we have population growth, we have industrialization, we have other markets growing. Certainly China probably has plateaued and reached their overall peak in terms of production. They are doing more than a billion tons of crude steel production annually. We think they will continue to be at that level, but we are seeing growth in Southeast Asia. India is growing substantially. We expect India to double the crude steel production in the next 10 years. Even the US is growing. So we are seeing more demand outside China. China will continue to be the key market for all of us, but we are seeing greater demand in other markets as well.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (2:49)
You've seen your copper production increase, I believe, from 5 to 10 percent of total revenues over the past five years.
You've talked about wanting to double it again over the next 10 or so years. What does that entail in terms of investing in existing mines, in terms of acquiring new assets? What exactly are you looking at?

**Gustavo Pimenta** (3:08)
Look, I'm very optimistic also about the copper demand. I mean, the electrification of everything, which is a secular trend, data centers, all of AI.
This will require an enormous amount of supply from copper. We in Brazil are sitting in a tremendous endowment. Vale has a great endowment, especially in the north of Brazil, to produce more copper. We've been doing, last year we did about 380 kilotons. We want to double this to about 700 kilotons. There is an enormous opportunity for us to accelerate the development of the critical minerals and the deposits that we have in the country.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (3:45)
Well, does that require acquiring other companies? Does that require investing large sums in existing mines?

**Gustavo Pimenta** (3:51)
So for us, it's more about Brownfield, because the unique advantage of Vale is the fact that we operate with very efficient capital intensity for the projects, because I have the rail, I have the port, I have the entire infrastructure. So for us, it's more about developing near mines and the Brownfield around our existing operations. It's less about M&A, but more about unlocking the potential that we already have.