Overview
Samarco is a privately held Brazilian mining company, controlled in equal parts by two shareholders: Vale S.A. and BHP Billiton. Samarco's main product is iron ore pellets. It transforms minerals with low ore content into a valuable product, with high added value, and sell them to steelmakers worldwide.
Samarco has two concentrators which beneficiate the ore and increase its iron content, and three pellet plants.
The two industrial units are connected by two pipelines, measuring almost 400 kilometers in length, which transport the slurry between two states, passing through 25 municipalities. Samarco is pioneers in this type of transportation and our pipelines are considered the largest in the world.
Samarco has its own port terminal, located in Ubu, through which to transport all its production. Samarco also has a hydroelectric plant in Muniz Freire (ES) and participate in the consortium to build the Guilman-Amorim hydroelectric plant in Antnio Dias and Nova Era (MG). Together, the two plants account for 26% of Samarco's electricity consumption.
Location
Samarco's Alegria mine is near the historic town of Mariana, approximately 10 km from the colonial city of Ouro Preto and 120 km from Belo Horizonte, in the 'iron-triangle' region of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Minas Gerais has an area slightly bigger than France and is the third largest Brazilian state. The population is 18 million.
The Samarco mine is 400 km from Rio de Janeiro. By air, the airport at Belo Horizonte, the current capital of Minas Gerais, is 100 km from Ouro Preto and connects to other Brazilian cities. By highway, the mine is 36 km from Belo Horizonte over the BR 040, which connects to the state highway to Rio and other major destinations.
Geology and Mineralization
The deposit consists of low-grade itabiritic ore. The geology type is a banded iron formation; the mineral type is itabirite, haematite and magnetite.
Mining Operation
Mining process takes place in an open pit mines of the Alegria Complex, at the Germano unit in Mariana, Minas Gerais. Samarco have reserves of 2.1 billion tons of iron ore at the two mines in operation. The production of the ore and the removal of the waste are carried out using a fleet of large-size mobile equipment as well as a conveyor belt system. This production logistics system reduces the costs.
Processing
At the beneficiation plants, the ore is prepared for the following phases of the production process. First it is crushed, then ground, and next its impurities are removed through a reverse flotation process, where the contaminants rise to the surface, a process pioneered by Samarco. After this phase, the ore, now transformed into slurry, complies with the chemical and physical specifications required for the next steps.
The slurry is conveyed from Germano, Minas Gerais, to the Ubu Unit, in Esprito Santo, through pipelines. This is another pioneering solution in Brazil adopted by Samarco for transporting its iron ore, and the almost 400 km-long pipelines are the longest in the world for this purpose.
When the slurry arrives in Ubu, in the municipality of Anchieta, Esprito Santo, the ore goes through filtration and then enters the pelletizing process. This involves agglomeration for the use of the ultrafine concentrated ore, transforming it into pellets of 8 to 16 mm in diameter. After undergoing heat treatment (firing) in the induration machines, these pellets finally attain the characteristics which make them ideal for either blast furnace or direct reduction processes in steelmaking.
The fired pellets are stockpiled in three yards with a joint storage capacity of up to 1.8 million tons, assuring a high inventory turnover and providing an autonomy of some 30 days of production. The port in Ubu has shiploading equipment which can load vessels at a rate of about 9 thousand tons per hour. The same port, owned by Samarco, also receives and unloads all of the coal used in the pelletizing process.
Environment and Community
Samarco has co-developed a technical metallurgical course focused on the production of iron ore pellets. The course is given by college professors and Samarco engineers, and is directed at Ponta Ubu employees. Employees get an opportunity for professional development, making it possible to obtain a diploma at a technical level and increase their productivity, employability and career options. Samarco gets better employees.
