There is no value in making copper cathodes in Brazil, as producing red-metal concentrate already aggregates most of the gains a producer can have, a spokesperson for Vale Base Metals (VBM) said at a market event on 10 June.
Concentrate aggregates 90-94pc of the value in copper's supply chain, leaving little gains in moving further downstream and producing copper cathodes, said VBM's corporate affairs director José Luiz Marques at the event organized by Brazil's mining institute Ibram.
Marques explained that, especially in a high-price environment such as today's, VBM is already maximizing value through copper concentrate production.
"When copper demand rises, treatment and refining charges (TC/RC) plunge, which is good for concentrate producers," Marques said, explaining that VBM prices its concentrate based on a formula consisting on London Metal Exchange figures, minus TC/RC fees and specific discounts depending on impurities. This means that the lower the processing fees, the higher the price of the concentrate.
"It is a great time to be a copper miner these days," he said during a panel at the Ibram event.
The costs to implement a smelter are very high, so there is not enough value added over the concentrate to make an investment worthwhile, according to Marques.
"The aggregated value of copper concentrate needs to be around 60-65pc to make copper cathodes a valuable addition to Vale," he said, noting that few jurisdictions are able to profit from smelting.
Criticism of Brazil's critical minerals bill
Brazil's critical minerals bill, which considers all mineral resources and commercial partners equal, should have looked at copper through a different lens, Marques argued.
Marques argued that copper has a much more established and liquid market than all other critical minerals, which should have been accounted for in the bill.
Half of the bill's financial benefits are contingent on companies "processing and transforming" critical minerals in Brazil. As VBM and other local copper producers stand to gain little value in doing so, they could be prevented from accessing over R5bn in tax credits in a five-year period.
VBM is slated to invest $10bn in the next 10 years in Carajás, its flagship copper asset.
VBM's Marques also argued that the bill does not cover the most-needed improvement for Brazilian critical mineral producers: celerity.
"It takes an average of 17 years to start-up a copper project in Brazil, and in 15 years the world will be in a supply deficit, so the numbers don't match," he said. "Only with celerity and agility in bureaucratic processes will Brazil be able to compete in the global copper industry."
He noted that China added one-third of its smelting capacity in the last 10 years as a successful example of agile processes.
Marques echoed the criticisms of fellow panelists at the Ibram conference, who pointed to slow environmental licensing and little predictability with bureaucratic processes, especially regarding timelines.
