Vale’s base metals unit aims to triple pre-tax profit to $5 billion this year, up from about $1.3 billion in 2024, when the business consumed around $2 billion in cash, chief executive Shaun Usmar told the CIM Capital Projects Symposium in Toronto on Monday. The push rests on cost reductions, an overhaul of operating accountability after years of missed targets and about $10 billion in capital project overruns over 18 years, and on stronger copper prices: Vale’s average realised copper price rose 56 percent year on year to $15,314 a tonne in the third quarter.
Vale Base Metals produced 382,300 tonnes of copper and 177,200 tonnes of nickel in 2025, up 10 percent and 11 percent, with copper at its highest since 2018. It targets 420,000 to 500,000 tonnes of copper and 210,000 to 250,000 tonnes of nickel a year by 2030, and about 700,000 tonnes of copper by 2035. Exploration drilling is targeted at 140,000 metres this year, up from about 30,000 metres in 2024, and the unit has generated more than $1 billion of free cash flow this year.
The growth is deliberately brownfield. In Canada, Vale wants more throughput at Sudbury, where it operates six mines, and a ramp up at the Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in Labrador. In Brazil, copper developments in the Carajas district would use existing processing facilities. Usmar said projected capital spending across the development portfolio has been cut by more than 30 percent while expected returns rose from the low to mid teens to more than 20 percent, citing one Brazilian project redesigned from more than $500 million to nearly half that cost.
Usmar urged governments to direct more support to brownfield developments, which can use existing infrastructure, workforces and processing capacity to bring supply to market sooner. The test of the $5 billion target is execution: the same project system that produced the overruns now has to deliver the redesigns on schedule.