CommoditiesIron ore price

Iron ore $300? Vale’s new dam buster deteriorates

David Llewellyn-Smith
Thursday, 10 June 2021
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I said recently that iron ore was not going to go to $300 unless we saw some new crisis to supply. Either another busted dam in Brazil or nationalist Indian policy or the like. Well, we have a candidate, via Reuters:

  • Regional Labor Department for the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais says Vale SA’s decomissioned Xingu dam is at “imminent risk of collapsing.”
  • Vale denies it but has suspended roughly 12mt of production as it clears out.

The Regional Labor Department said in the statement on Wednesday that the area was closed after a request for documents on April 27 and an inspection on May 20. The company will have to take various technical measures to get permission to reopen the area.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.