We have again had an amazing couple of days this time in the area around Carajas in the north of Brazil not too far from the equator. It is in the Amazon jungle which you notice as you come in to land. The next thing you notice is the heat. Hits you as you get off the plane and doesn’t let up until you find air conditioning. The days we were there were 380 and 390 every day and it is only mid September. I really wonder what January is like???
Vale believes this could be the greatest mineral province in the world and I think they could be correct. Firstly about the area. We stayed in the town of Parauapabas. If you can say it you are better than us. We just said we stayed in the wheelbarrow town. Any name I can’t say I just call wheelbarrow. There are a lot of them in Brazil. This is a very poor town which should see tremendous social benefits from the mining growth in the area. The housing is eye-opening with “homes” jammed together like sardines. Many homes had clothes lines strung up on the footpath. Our hotel (don’t call it a motel in Brazil as these establishments are rented by the hour for dalliances) was the cleanest and nicest part of town.
You can’t speed here (a fact the locals seem to have missed) as there are huge speed bumps on the main roads and the back streets have a network of very deep gutters which run across intersections to get the obviously huge volumes of water away during the wet season.
Back to the mineral province. Within a few hours of Carajas there are iron ore mines, copper mines, manganese mines, nickel mines, gold mines and bauxite mines. This area has the largest iron ore mine in the world and Vale are developing a bigger iron ore mine about 50km away. They are also developing a copper mine which will be one of the biggest in the world. There are eight copper mines either in production or planned within 2 hrs. Vale controls all of the mineral province and are committed to developing it. At present it is the increasing environmental controls which are slowing the development a little but it will happen. Vale want to be the biggest mining company in the world and this area could easily deliver that title to them so BHP had better watch out.
On Monday we travelled from Rio to Carajas which took about 4.5 hours. We then had a tour of the Sossego Copper Mine. This is one of eight copper mines planned for the area. It is currently 140 metres deep and is planned to go down to 420 metres. They have three large shovels, three smaller shovels, three large excavators and four large front end loaders. They have about 40 large trucks. We thought it was big until they told us that the “big” copper mine (about 150km from this one by road) was going to be four times larger!!! It was commented to me that given the amount of copper in this area – “don’t bet on copper” as there is enough here to flood the world market.
On Tuesday we repeated our 4.5 hour seminar – in a hall in a really poor and dirty area. The hall itself was OK. There were 22 attendees from most of the mines. Most impressive were the two attendees from a Nickel mine who left home at 4.00am for our 9.30am start. Least impressive was the representative of the innovation department who couldn’t get to the town as the road from the town he stayed in was blocked by some local group agitating for better social services (mostly housing) from the Government. We might have had our elections in Australia but they are yet to have theirs. They are on the first weekend in October so the local agitators are all active. Geraldo worried me just a little when he informed me he forgot the charger for his laptop. So I thought I would have to do 141 slides written in Portuguese with no English prompts. I know it pretty well but still some way to go to speak for 4.5 hrs with minimal prompts. The day went well although we didn’t have the real time translation. This time I said a sentence and our Brazillian distributor said a sentence. It was well accepted so either I did a good job or he did (or maybe we both did?). I was very tired by the end. I made the mistake of going out to the kitchen area to thank the people who catered at the end of the day. What a stupid idea. It was a thousand degrees under a tin roof and the kitchen had a dirty concrete floor. It was just as dirty as outside. Judy and I didn’t get sick (yet) which is a miracle. The caterers did a great job (I think) in very difficult conditions!!
That night Geraldo took us to his favourite restaurant in Parauapados (you know – the wheelbarrow town). Geraldo and I shared a huge fish dish. Don’t have a clue what fish but it was good. Judy ordered a chicken dish. Half an hour later they came out and informed us that the chicken was “no good”!! What does that mean?? Had it been out under that tin roof or had the chicken meat (when it was a chicken) been cooked too often under the persistent sun?? Or maybe the chicken wasn’t really chicken and they just didn’t serve it to “westerners”? One thing I know is that if it was my restaurant I wouldn’t be telling customers that the chicken was no good. “We ran out” or “our supplier hasn’t come yet” but not that it is “no good”. Geraldo suggested the parmiagana. Didn’t look like any parmy I have ever seen and Judy confirmed it didn’t taste like any parmy she had eaten. It had some meat in it. Hmmmmm. Mind you the amount they delivered would have been more food that all the people in the poor area we held the seminar in would have eaten in the last week. Hopefully they received the leftovers.
On Wednesday we went to the Carajas iron ore mine. This is currently the largest iron ore mine in the world. They move over 250 million tonnes per annum and produce over 100 million tonnes of iron concentrate. Everything about it is big. They have the largest model rope shovel in the world (120 tonne payload); they have the largest model excavator in the world; they have the largest model truck (400 tons); etc. They have three huge pits with over 30 loaders and 108 trucks. However, size is not everything. Size produces logistical issues with maximising equipment output. Hopefully we can help them with that. he morning was a site tour and the afternoon I gave another (1 hr) presentation to two people from Carajas’s training department. We caught the flight back at 6.00pm and got back to our apartment in Rio at 11.00pm.
After three 15-17 hour days we decided to have a few days off so we took a long weekend to Iguazu Falls. This place is amazing from another perspective but more about that later.
Vale believes this could be the greatest mineral province in the world and I think they could be correct. Firstly about the area. We stayed in the town of Parauapabas. If you can say it you are better than us. We just said we stayed in the wheelbarrow town. Any name I can’t say I just call wheelbarrow. There are a lot of them in Brazil. This is a very poor town which should see tremendous social benefits from the mining growth in the area. The housing is eye-opening with “homes” jammed together like sardines. Many homes had clothes lines strung up on the footpath. Our hotel (don’t call it a motel in Brazil as these establishments are rented by the hour for dalliances) was the cleanest and nicest part of town.
You can’t speed here (a fact the locals seem to have missed) as there are huge speed bumps on the main roads and the back streets have a network of very deep gutters which run across intersections to get the obviously huge volumes of water away during the wet season.
Back to the mineral province. Within a few hours of Carajas there are iron ore mines, copper mines, manganese mines, nickel mines, gold mines and bauxite mines. This area has the largest iron ore mine in the world and Vale are developing a bigger iron ore mine about 50km away. They are also developing a copper mine which will be one of the biggest in the world. There are eight copper mines either in production or planned within 2 hrs. Vale controls all of the mineral province and are committed to developing it. At present it is the increasing environmental controls which are slowing the development a little but it will happen. Vale want to be the biggest mining company in the world and this area could easily deliver that title to them so BHP had better watch out.
On Monday we travelled from Rio to Carajas which took about 4.5 hours. We then had a tour of the Sossego Copper Mine. This is one of eight copper mines planned for the area. It is currently 140 metres deep and is planned to go down to 420 metres. They have three large shovels, three smaller shovels, three large excavators and four large front end loaders. They have about 40 large trucks. We thought it was big until they told us that the “big” copper mine (about 150km from this one by road) was going to be four times larger!!! It was commented to me that given the amount of copper in this area – “don’t bet on copper” as there is enough here to flood the world market.
On Tuesday we repeated our 4.5 hour seminar – in a hall in a really poor and dirty area. The hall itself was OK. There were 22 attendees from most of the mines. Most impressive were the two attendees from a Nickel mine who left home at 4.00am for our 9.30am start. Least impressive was the representative of the innovation department who couldn’t get to the town as the road from the town he stayed in was blocked by some local group agitating for better social services (mostly housing) from the Government. We might have had our elections in Australia but they are yet to have theirs. They are on the first weekend in October so the local agitators are all active. Geraldo worried me just a little when he informed me he forgot the charger for his laptop. So I thought I would have to do 141 slides written in Portuguese with no English prompts. I know it pretty well but still some way to go to speak for 4.5 hrs with minimal prompts. The day went well although we didn’t have the real time translation. This time I said a sentence and our Brazillian distributor said a sentence. It was well accepted so either I did a good job or he did (or maybe we both did?). I was very tired by the end. I made the mistake of going out to the kitchen area to thank the people who catered at the end of the day. What a stupid idea. It was a thousand degrees under a tin roof and the kitchen had a dirty concrete floor. It was just as dirty as outside. Judy and I didn’t get sick (yet) which is a miracle. The caterers did a great job (I think) in very difficult conditions!!
That night Geraldo took us to his favourite restaurant in Parauapados (you know – the wheelbarrow town). Geraldo and I shared a huge fish dish. Don’t have a clue what fish but it was good. Judy ordered a chicken dish. Half an hour later they came out and informed us that the chicken was “no good”!! What does that mean?? Had it been out under that tin roof or had the chicken meat (when it was a chicken) been cooked too often under the persistent sun?? Or maybe the chicken wasn’t really chicken and they just didn’t serve it to “westerners”? One thing I know is that if it was my restaurant I wouldn’t be telling customers that the chicken was no good. “We ran out” or “our supplier hasn’t come yet” but not that it is “no good”. Geraldo suggested the parmiagana. Didn’t look like any parmy I have ever seen and Judy confirmed it didn’t taste like any parmy she had eaten. It had some meat in it. Hmmmmm. Mind you the amount they delivered would have been more food that all the people in the poor area we held the seminar in would have eaten in the last week. Hopefully they received the leftovers.
On Wednesday we went to the Carajas iron ore mine. This is currently the largest iron ore mine in the world. They move over 250 million tonnes per annum and produce over 100 million tonnes of iron concentrate. Everything about it is big. They have the largest model rope shovel in the world (120 tonne payload); they have the largest model excavator in the world; they have the largest model truck (400 tons); etc. They have three huge pits with over 30 loaders and 108 trucks. However, size is not everything. Size produces logistical issues with maximising equipment output. Hopefully we can help them with that. he morning was a site tour and the afternoon I gave another (1 hr) presentation to two people from Carajas’s training department. We caught the flight back at 6.00pm and got back to our apartment in Rio at 11.00pm.
After three 15-17 hour days we decided to have a few days off so we took a long weekend to Iguazu Falls. This place is amazing from another perspective but more about that later.
