Vale CEO Roger Agnelli Takes Technology Underground
With skills in banking and a passion for engineering, Agnelli aims to make Vale the biggest mining company in the world.
Courtesy Vale News Agency
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E-mailIn northern Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon rain forest, is the Carajás mining complex, where a reported 300,000 tons of iron ore are extracted each day. To ensure that the mines at Carajás are working as efficiently as possible, owner Vale SA (VALE), Brazil’s largest mining company as measured by revenue, built an operational control center within the complex in 2007 that essentially acts like the mine’s brain, explains President and CEO Roger Agnelli. He says everything to do with operations within the enormous mine — the equipment used there, treatment plants for the ore, and dispatch facilities — is monitored and controlled remotely through the use of satellites. Engineers, he points out, can see what’s happening at any stage of production: how a particular piece of equipment is working, for example, or how much ore is in a crusher at any given moment. They can also make corrections or changes in real time.
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Walking through this control center and visiting Vale’s geologists and engineers to see what new ideas they have dreamed up is one aspect that Agnelli, 50, says he truly enjoys about his job. “I’m crazy about technology and innovation,” he says from the company’s Rio de Janeiro headquarters. “I love to visit the different operations to see what they’re working on and how they’re figuring things out.” Agnelli oversees a global mining empire with 115,000 employees (its own and contractors) spread across 38 countries on five continents. Vale, pronounced like the word valley, is the world’s largest producer of iron ore (the main component of steel) and the second largest producer of nickel (a key strengthening agent in steel), analysts say. It has a market cap of about $175 billion, about 55 times greater than its value when the Brazilian government privatized the company in 1997 and approximately 19 times greater than when Agnelli took over in 2001, the company reports.
Aside from identifying problems that could slow production, Vale’s satellite technology helps engineers find the most energy-efficient routes between where the iron ore is extracted and the facility in the complex where it will be processed. Massive off-highway trucks capable of hauling upward of 240 tons of material (10 times more than what a typical commercial construction truck can carry) currently transport the ore from the mine to the processing plants. But beginning in 2014, giant automated conveyor belts, which are now under construction, will replace the trucks, explains Luiz Mello, director of technology and innovation at Vale.
“What we are investing in new technologies — to reduce emissions, to develop new products and to [be] more cost-efficient — will drive Vale’s growth.” — Roger Agnelli, president and CEO, Vale
The advantages of the conveyor belts are easy to see. Unlike trucks, the belts are powered by electricity, not fossil fuels. They’re also less affected by rainy weather conditions found in the Amazon rain forest that often make the ramps and roads the trucks use as slippery as ice. The biggest technological challenge, explains Mello, was engineering the new conveyor belts to handle the enormous weight of the iron ore for distances of up to 10 miles. “We had to figure out how to make the supporting structure stronger and tested it repeatedly to ensure it could handle the sheer stress of the iron ore’s weight,” he says.
The conveyor belts, which will also be controlled through the operations center, are a good example of Agnelli’s belief in the power of technology. “What we are investing in new technologies — to reduce emissions, to develop new products and to find better, more cost-efficient ways to run the business — will drive Vale’s growth in the future,” he says.
