Circular Mining: Vale Base Metals and BluestOne sign long-term offtake agreement to repurpose refinery waste in Brazil

Highlights:

• The agreement allows Vale Base Metals to advance its circular mining ambitions by utilizing BluestOne's expertise to repurpose slag and other waste to useful valuable products.
• It includes an offtake agreement of ~50,000tpa of slag from Vale's Onça Puma operations for 10 years.
• A non-binding MOU setting out the scope of further cooperation in waste-to-value and circular mining has also been agreed.
• Reduces Vale Base Metals' legacy environmental footprint at its Onça Puma mine in Brazil with opportunity to scale across operations.

TORONTO, Oct. 3, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Vale Base Metals has signed a commercial off-take and non-binding MOU with BluestOne, a leading Brazilian company that transforms waste to products for agriculture, to provide up to 50,000 tonnes per year of refinery slag from its Onça Puma mine in Brazil for the next 10 years. BluestOne will commence construction within two years of a plant near Onça Puma to process slag products into a solution to enhance carbon-efficient mineral fertilizers with broad use in the agricultural sector.

Under the terms of the agreement, both companies also agree to work together to explore additional circular economy opportunities for treatment and repurposing further waste products from Onça Puma as well as other Vale Base Metals operations globally. This includes potentially bolstering BluestOne's production of recycled nickel recovered from waste products around the world.

The MOU also envisages cooperation between Vale and BluestOne to explore additional sustainability partnerships including utilizing the fertilizer from slag for biomass production.

Deshnee Naidoo, CEO of Vale Base Metals, said: "Waste-to-value and circular mining are key levers in our sustainability strategy and technology roadmap. This MOU and scalability of BluestOne's technology supports our ambition to capture value from what have historically been waste streams while reducing our legacy environmental footprint as part of a wider approach to circular mining."

Marcelo Carratú, BluestOne's Co-Founder, said: "BluestOne was born with the circular economy in its DNA and sustainability is the reason for our existence. This long-term partnership with Vale Base Metals fills us with pride as it represents a significant milestone to globally advance our mission in further developing new green mining solutions and to promote biodiversity preservation, education and environmental restoration initiatives."

Vale Base Metals is North America's largest integrated nickel producer and among the largest copper businesses globally, with the scale, resources and capital to deliver critical minerals essential for the global decarbonization and electrification megatrends. The company has secured agreements to supply low carbon and high purity nickel to major automakers and is strategically focused on expanding mine life and development of growth projects across the portfolio.

BluestOne is a leader in South America in transforming environmental liabilities into high-quality, high-performance products and low-carbon solutions for sectors including the automotive industry, technical applications such as welding, abrasive electrodes, and fertilizers. BluestOne has its headquarters in Saltinho, São Paulo state, Brazil.

Media Relations Office – Vale, media.valebasemetals@vale.com