Global Stock Exchange. Brazil represents our biggest market in Latin America. We list 30 companies from Brazil worth more than BRL 430 billion. It's a great community of companies. More than BRL 1.2 billion worth of shares trade every single day from Brazil on the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, Vale trades close to BRL 20 million a day on the New York Stock Exchange. We're very proud of our relationship with Vale. Next year will mark, in fact, 20 years of Vale on the New York Stock Exchange. When we welcome the team back next year, we not only will be informing investors on what's next at Vale, but we'll be marking the 20th anniversary of the company on the New York Stock Exchange. Without further ado, I'd like to welcome CEO Eduardo Bartolomeo up to the stage. Eduardo, thank you.
Thanks so much. Good morning, everyone. It's okay here? Okay. First of all, thanks a lot for being here today with us to listen to our narrative, our history. As well, I hope you have a nice holidays. Well, 2019, for sure, has been the most difficult year for Vale in its history. With the tragedy of Brumadinho, we lost colleagues, friends, and community members. In this Vale Day, my first as Vale's CEO, I would like to ask you a moment of silence in respect for the victims and in their memories. We'll show a little video now. Thank you. We will never forget Brumadinho. For that, myself and my team, we are committed to building a much more safer and more reliable company. Since I took over Vale's leadership, three words have guided me, and I've been very insistent on repeating. It's people, it's safety, and it's reparation.
Those three words, they have guided us to design the roadmap that will lead, in our view, for the de-risking of Vale. The first step of this journey is the full reparation of Brumadinho. Today, we have already 400 people directly involved in this reparation with an executive directly reported to me. The second part of this journey is to assure that we operate under the strictest safety standards, that we guarantee our dam integrities and the asset integrities of the other assets of Vale. Third, we will bring production, but in a sustainable way. Finally, we will allocate capital in the most disciplined way, as you're going to see later in the presentation. By the way, the presentation was designed on those four topics because we understand all around Vale, around Vale's performances, how are we going to de-risk Vale.
You're going to see the blocks of the presentation. We'll follow that. Secondly, I would like to call your attention for two words that we hope, they will be repeatedly being said here, I believe, during the presentations. First one is listening. Second one is execution. Vale is well known for its extremely capacity to execute. We are doing things in a faster way, in a faster pace, but we have to improve a lot our ability to listen. Those two things together can create a better company. With that said, I would like to invite Marcelo Klein, the director that I just mentioned, that is responsible for the reparation efforts, and he'll detail to you how these things is evolving. Thank you. Thanks, Klein.
Thank you, Eduardo. Good morning, everyone. Our mission at Vale is the full reparation of Brumadinho, the reparation of the damage caused to the people and territories. We have structured our reparation actions inspired by the United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights. There is a third first principle that says that business enterprise must establish operational level mechanisms to guarantee that the grievances that come from the communities where we have operations are treated, addressed, based on engagement and dialogue. We really pay a lot of attention to that, to how can we improve our listening skills. I brought you here a simplified version of a typical weekly schedule, my own schedule, what is a typical week for me. My week will start on Monday with a meeting with Eduardo, our CEO, and the executive directors.
When I have one hour to talk about how reparation is evolving, what are the critical issues for the week, what are the medium and long-term risks, and I also ask for help and support from all the functions represented there in that meeting, IT, procurement, legal, corporate social affairs, and so on. I have all Vale there, welcoming me and putting all the resources available for reparation, what's very important. Along the week, on Tuesday, for example, I have meetings with prosecutors and other public authorities. We had a lot of issues to discuss. On Wednesday, I have discussions with the fire officers, just remembering that we're talking about 270 fatalities, and we still have 14 victims who are missing. For those families, it's still very important to keep the rescue operations going on.
That rescue operation has been lasting for 10 months, for more than 300 days now. On Thursday, we're meeting with the families, the representatives from the families of the victims. We have a huge agenda to cover as well. They bring a lot of demands to us. We're also discussing the construction of a memorial. We need to listen to them to how they want us to address that. This is an illustration of how we wanted to put that concept, carrying it forward in our reparation, that social dialogue and social listening drives our reparation efforts. To talk to you a bit more about what we are doing for reparation of Brumadinho, we have organized our main actions in four main pillars. I'm going to talk some more details about them. The first one is restoring the livelihoods and the dignity of those affected.
The second one are the economic and the non-economic compensations. The third pillar is restoring the productive capacity of affected areas. The fourth pillar is restoring the environment. I'm going to give you some more details on how we are acting in each of those different pillars. The first one, restoring the livelihood and dignity of affected people, is the most important one. We have to understand that we have a framework of grief, sorrow, mourning. That demands a lot of sensitivity from our side. We need to be very sensible in the way we're talking to people. Having those people allowing us to get close to them, sitting side by side, listening to their difficulties, is a big privilege for us. In fact, they talk about the memories of the people they lost in Brumadinho.
They share with us their concerns and fears about the future. For sure, that help us to develop a very deep empathy with their grief. As a natural consequence, reparation becomes a personal matter. This has been a huge learning for us. Sitting side by side with the families of the victims, trying to build up the restorations of their lives, something very important. By welcoming the families, by providing information, care, attention, and all kinds of resources and service to those families, we want to guarantee that they're going to through probably the most difficult moments of their lives with dignity. As we're talking about sorrow and grief, you need to pay attention to details. The reparation can be divided in two big issues. We're talking about the physical stuff and the emotional ones.
The physical side, we take care of water, food, toilets, and healthcare and housing. That's the easiest part. When you talk about emotional issues, things are much more complicated. For reparation, the mental health and the psychosocial support to give to the victims and families of the victims is very important. We understand and we follow all the technical background on those disciplines that are provided by expert teams from the United Nations. We also recognize that this is one of the most challenging areas, how to guarantee that people will be recovered, psychologically speaking. We also recognize there is still improvements to be captured in that area.
One example on those details that you need to take care, in one of those meetings, the families came to us say, "Vale, please change the color of the buses that provides the commuting service, picking up and dropping off the employees every day from home to work and back to home." Because for widows, for wives, for mothers who lost their sons, very difficult to see the buses going through the city, and that reminds them of the huge loss they had. We are doing that. We are changing all the colors of the buses. We also suggested to them to change the routes of the buses, avoiding those streets where several families of the victims live. Things that for too many people sounds like details, become critical and very important to them.
You can only capture that when you exercise good listening. Our second pillar talks about economic and non-economic compensation. Economic compensation is very important, but it's not enough. Let's first talk about why it is important. It's important because it helps restoring the normality of the lives of people as much as possible. The collapse of the dam happened in January 25th, and in February 20th, we have signed our first big framework agreement to provide emergency financial support to all the citizens in Brumadinho and all the inhabitants along the Paraopeba River that lives in one kilometer from one bank and the other bank of the river. That is a huge help, lasting for 12 months from February until next January, and it's already covering 108,000 people. We have applied more than 1 billion BRL with that emergency help.
Last week, we have renewed that agreement for 10 months more, while using different eligibility criteria, more concentrated on those territories who were dramatically affected and reducing the amount paid for those who were not directly connected with affected areas. On April the 5th, we have signed another important framework agreement with the public defensory that was covering all the material and the moral indemnifications for the families. We have established that using very fair and competitive criteria, conditions to restore the houses, the means of living. If they have interrupted their sources of demands of income, we also are restoring. For those agreements, we have already 2,300 people benefited from them. In June, we carry out the third big framework agreement that talks about labor. Reminding you that from the 207 victims, 250 were workers. It's basically a labor tragedy.
We also discussed it with the government prosecutors, the labor prosecutors, about the conditions and the details for the labor indemnifications. We have more than 1,500 people already signed those agreements, and from the 250 families of the victims of the workers, 244 have already signed agreements showing that we're really providing a fair and competitive package of indemnification. Besides the economic issues, we have also signed 22 other agreements with different public agents that are related, for example, to the water quality monitoring, to rescue and care of animals, of fauna, to find new source of water, like drilling wells in critical areas, so that we can compensate for the impossibilities of taking water from the river for a limited period of time, and also some other measures to increase the quality of our operations.
Again, we are here talking about construction, a joint construction with different stakeholders. By the end of this year, the total of disbursements and general expense related to the preparation of Brumadinho will amount to BRL 1.6 billion. We stress again that numbers are not the most important figure, but they are key element as well to make things happen, and then we can faster try to get back the normality of the area. Our third pillar talks about the restore and development of socioeconomic capacity. Once you have provide the gross stuff, the main stuff for people to recover, how start to think about the future. In this socioeconomic capacity, we have to think about individuals, communities, entities, and governments. At the individual level, we are providing a full reparation support program, mainly for those who have signed the indemnifications, the agreements.
Once they receive a considerable amount of money, they get financial planning education so that they make better choice on what will they do with the money and how they restore the conditions of their lives. We also provide support on real estate acquisition for small agricultures on how they will resume their plantations, and also for those people who run small business, we also provide advisory and technical support for them. At the community level, we are in fact sponsoring many projects to reconnect the people as a group. We are sponsoring programs related to productive backgrounds, community backyards and gardens, and family agriculture, handcraft workshops. All different kinds of activities that put the people from the communities together, so they start to reconnect among themselves and find back the power of the collective. It's very important.
Talking about entities, we are also providing and discussing with several public actors what can be done in order to improve the quality of the population. For example, with the Secretary of Health, of Social Assistance, of Tourism, of the Municipality of Brumadinho, we are providing training of people, resources, and offices so that they can provide better services to the community, to the population. With the government, I'd like to reinforce that we take part of Aliança por Brumadinho. It's a group of several multinational and national companies that They are taking actions to help Brumadinho. They wanted to leave a legacy for the long term. They are also sponsoring and supporting different activities. As a fourth pillar, I want to talk about the-
To reduce the impacts caused to the environment by the breach of dam 1 in Brumadinho, Vale has been working to contain tailings, recover the environment, and ensure the water catchment and supply in the region. To clean and restore the Ferro-Carvão stream and the impacted section of the Paraopeba River, two water treatment stations were built and are now operating. The first station has already treated and returned over 1 billion liters of clean water to the Paraopeba River. We are working on the removal of accumulated tailings, starting with the dredging of the silted area of the river and withdrawing branches and materials. Vale has also developed different emergency works for environmental recovery and the containment and removal of tailings to minimize the impact. The construction of structures which will guarantee the water supply to the Belo Horizonte metropolitan region is underway.
We also have initiatives planned to develop sanitation in 22 municipalities in that region.
Okay. This video talks about the fourth pillar, that is the environmental recovery. Since the very beginning, there was a big concern on how you can prevent the environmental damage to go on, to avoid all the sediments that we spread to go to the river. We have put in place a lot of engineering structures to avoid sediments to be carried out during the wet season. We have heavy rains from November to February, and we started already having those rains. We have noticed that those apparatus are working very well. While we are cleaning the area and removing the sediments, we need to avoid the sediments from going back to the river. We also have actions related to the protection of the springs of the river, of revegetation.
There's a whole set of actions to guarantee that we're restoring the conditions of environment and the fauna as well. Finishing my presentation, I'd like just to reinforce first that we are really taking social dialogue and listening as a key driver for reparation, and we understand that this legitimates our action in the territories. We also have a strong and bold presence on the ground. We have more than 200 people working every day in Brumadinho, spreading along different areas, talking to the communities every day and taking care of those demands. We are providing fastly a fair and competitive reparation through indemnifications so that the people affected can quickly restore as much as possible the normalities of their lives. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm going to now hand over back to Eduardo.
Okay. Thank you, Klein. Well, I think you could see that reparation is happening at a fast pace, much more importantly, with quality. I think we need to go beyond and build a better Vale. Those two new pillars, they were already announced. I think Barcelona, first time we mentioned that, is the pillar of safety and operational excellence. The second one is the new pact with society. The former ones was presented here in New York and London last year. Is well known by you, is the flight to quality, is the transformation of base metals and the capital allocation. We would like to go now for the first two. They are what we call the cut across, that will make Vale a better company, we will start with the safety and operational excellence.
I think Vale has an ambition, and we have to search that, is to be one of the safest mines in the industry. For sure, we need to talk about governance, about processes, about people, and one of the first decisions that we took with support of our board is to create a C-level function to deal with that. We had some reference around the industry, and we created this Safety and Operational Executive Officer. We invited Carlos Medeiros, a well-rounded executive from manufacturing to run it because around safety, we see another pillar that is the operational excellence. With that said, I'll ask Carlos to come here and explain how he's going to achieve this dream and objective. Thanks.
Good morning. Following Vale's decision to strengthen its governance on risk management and safety, this office was created. I lead Vale's second line of defense, and I report directly to Eduardo Bartholomeu Vale e Silva. It's important to clarify that my compensation package is not tied to any operational targets whatsoever. Also, it's also important to clarify that my team and I have the full authority to stop any given operation whenever necessary. In order to avoid another major unwanted event, this office is being organized around four areas. First one, tailings. We have to ensure that our dams are safe and complying with the international standards. In asset integrity, our assets are well-maintained and safe to operate with. Operational excellence is about our VPS, the Vale Production System, that will be the vehicle that will sustain all the changes going forward.
The health and safety and operational risks to enhance the safety culture and also map all the risks around the company. We believe that every accident is preventable. As such, every action that we'll be taking is to build a safer and more reliable company. There'll be some milestones that will be achieved in the next couple of years that I would like to share with you. Global risk assessment is about using a very comprehensive methodology for hazard identification and risk assessment in all of our operations. The Tailings Management System is to build a TMS, a Tailings Management System, in line with the best international practices. VPS revise and relaunch it. That's the Vale Production System that has been revised and more than 60,000 people trained so far to use the VPS as a means to support all the ongoing transformation.
Strengthen our global maintenance structure is about implementing one single maintenance strategy to guarantee our asset integrity. Governance plays a fundamental role in accident prevention. This is why this slide is showing our governance before our previous and our current governance. Our board has approved a new risk policy. Since then, four executive risk committees have been created. We believe that with this configuration, we can monitor risks in a much closer way. Also, it allows information to flow very openly at all organizational levels. As far as geotechnical structures are concerned, we have chosen to adopt a different model, a model that has several redundancies in it. This is by design. Let me walk you through this slide. Starting on your far left, the first two boxes, they belong to our first line of defense, which is our operation.
The very first box on your left, that's the geotechnical operations team. They own the risk, they operate the asset, and they are overseen by the second box, the geotechnical support team. There comes the second line of defense, the one I lead, as another layer in this governance. We have the independent board committee for dam safety that reports directly to our board. This committee is built with external advisors that support us with our structures. We have the third line of defense, which is our internal audit. On top of all this, we have two external layers. The first one are the companies that work with us on a continuous base to certify the stability of our dams. The second one are the companies that also work with us on a continuous base, but they report to the public prosecutors.
All in all, we have seven instances where safety and operations of our geotechnical structures are discussed to maximize safety. This goes way beyond the traditional three lines of defense model used in the industry. This slide shows our plans for de-characterizing nine upstream dams similar to the one at Brumadinho. The yellow stars there, they show the completion date for the containment walls for the most critical structures. De-characterizing a dam is a very complex process that encompasses several steps. As a matter of fact, the 8B dam, the one at the top, has been already fully de-characterized, and the area it used to occupy has been returned to society. Action's taking place as we speak, so companies have been hired, people mobilized, so we can meet the planned timetable for that.
There is a video that you'll watch that will help you understand the de-characterization process.
In January 2019, Vale announced the upstream dams de-characterization plan. The 8B dam is the first of nine structures in this plan to cease function as a dam. Situated at Mina de Águas Claras in the municipality of Nova Lima, the 8B was a waste containment upstream dam. In other words, the heightened structure was supported on the waste. Before the construction started, the water from the reservoir had been removed by a pumping system. Later, the removal of the upstream structure and the construction of a canal with blocks of stone took place. Such canal allows the natural runoff of surface water. The construction lasted for six months. The planting of native species has already started. 1,100 tree seedlings will be used to revegetate the area and reintegrate it into the natural environment. We will continue working in order to eliminate risks from the upstream dams.
Before I conclude, I would like to leave with you three key messages. First one is, in order to de-risk its business, Vale is building an independent and strong second line of defense. The second message is, risk and safety is at the very center of every decision we are making at Vale. The third one is a strong and robust Tailings Management System is being put in place. I will hand over now to Marcello Spinelli, who will present how Vale will treat the remaining dams going forward. Please.
Good morning. In addition to risk management and also the characterization of the dams that Carlos just said, we've been investing in alternative for tailings dams. I'm the operator of iron ore. I'm the first line of defense. Now, I want to say that I'm really committed to avoid the use of dams. We want to change this. How we are doing this? Well, 2014, the capacity of production with dry processing method was 40%. This year reached 60% with the dry processing method, and going to reach 70% in 2023. In the Northern System, we're going to reach 100% in two years. As we have a strategy to blend products in China, you know very well about this, using the high grades, high product, high quality products from the North, blending with the southern products, we can reduce the necessity of wet processing in the South.
That's the main strategy. We still have a remaining 30% of the production using dams. What we are doing to avoid the use of dams? This is our new information here. We are anticipating $1.8 billion to invest in filters that we can separate the tailings from the water, reuse the water, and have the dry stacking of the tailings. This is a process that is under construction for the main sites like Cauê, Conceição and Brucutu 2. We still have a remaining 14%-15% production use wet processing. This is another important information here. We just bought this year the New Steel company. This is a company that use the method of dry magnetic concentration. We even don't use water to separate the ore from the tailings.
We're gonna be the first in the industry that we're going to use on a scale basis, a process that we use this technology in 2022. If you succeed, we're gonna close the gap of the remaining 40%. I think as, what is the main message here? We want to avoid the use of the dams, and we are committed to make it happen. The future of an iron ore operation will be without dams. Now, Eduardo please, come to the stage again.
Thank you, Marcelo. As you could see, I think we have effective actions towards what we believe is an ambitious plan, an ambitious goal, but we're effectively fixing our governance, resourcing our teams. We're effectively decommissioning the dams as fast as we can. We're effectively moving to a safer way to operate. That bring us to the second pillar that I mentioned earlier. Be safe is key, but it's not enough. Society has demanded from Vale, from the industry as well, after Brumadinho, a new way to create and share value. We see this as ourselves being an enabler at development, beginning with the local territory up to the society. We need to look at where we operate and how we impact the whole. As you remember, last year, we announced several goals.
Most of them about environment, the last ones about the social development focused in Brazil and on climate change, on energy, water, and forest. As I said to you, we need to move further. We need to go beyond. People are expecting much more. With the commitment of our board, listening again to stakeholders, we did a very bold change in our goals. We understand that being a mining company on a supply chain that has the steel industry behind is a huge contributor to the carbon emissions. Luciano is going to come in a little while to explain how we will lead the transition to carbon neutral mining industry. We have assets that nobody has. Actually, about listening, sometimes you need to talk as well.
We have a huge base of clean energy, a huge footprint on the forestation, water, as Spinelli just mentioned, on dry processing. We can and will lead the transition to carbon neutral mining. Importantly, I'll come back later to explain this sixth goal that we created. There is a roadmap. We mapped all the gaps that we have around ESG, and we are dealing with it, and we did a roadmap and a plan to eliminate them. For that, I would like to invite Luciano to go in each of those dimensions and explain how are we going to get there.
We put a lot of effort in thinking about how can we go beyond simply fixing Brumadinho, repairing and improving safety. That's the baseline. That's not enough, so we need to go beyond. Everyone is talking about purpose for corporations. Everyone is talking about climate change. Everyone is talking about sustainability. Should we just jump in the bandwagon and do what everyone is doing? We realized that we can lead, and that's the key word for today's. We can lead because we are endowed with the certain assets and the position of our products to lead the way. Of those six goals here, in three of them at least, we believe we can be different from anyone else. The first one is climate change. We are announcing today that we're going to become carbon neutral by 2050. Others have done that.
We're announcing today that we'll be compliant with the Paris Agreement. Others have done that. This implies in a twofold reduction. Instead of 15%-16% reduction of CO2 emissions till 2030, we're gonna do around 30%. Where are we different? We're different because we do have the products to help our customers reduce their footprint. We have the high-grade iron ore, we have the pellets, we have the nickel, who will electrify the world. We will establish a Scope 3, steelmaking and shipping target, ambitious one to help our customers make that transition. In that we're different. We will develop, as a business opportunity, products to cater to their needs. Spinelli will describe to you the opportunity in metallics products and the technologies we're using to that. The second pillar we believe we can also lead is in energy. Why is that?
Because we're endowed with a footprint in Brazil and Canada and Indonesia. Today, 60% of the power that Vale generates is already self-generation, and it's already renewable. We are now committing to go to 100% globally until 2030. By 2025, we're gonna be 100% self-sufficient, renewable power generation in Brazil. We believe also we have a unique position in that. The other pillar that we believe we are unique is forest, as Eduardo mentioned. I don't know if you know about it, but we already protect and preserve 1 million hectares of native forest, and most of it in the Amazon. How much is 1 million hectares? This is about 170 times the size of the Manhattan Island. It's about 3x the size of Long Island, which is 120 miles long. It's about the size of the state of Connecticut.
We will increase this by 50%. That's the goal. To increase recovery and protection of areas by 50%. We are in the Amazon. We have the largest iron ore mines in the world within the Amazon, and we're doing this. Finally, when we go to the social economic contribution, we want to go further. We're gonna go beyond simply corporate social responsibility and paying our taxes, and we want to act as a true development enabler. I'm gonna show you a video about the things we're starting to do in Itabira. Itabira is the city where Vale was born 70 years ago, and its mines will exhaust in 15 years. We're already making bold plans to leave a true legacy for Itabira. Jumping straight to the video. Here we go.
Vale's goal is to positively impact society by contributing to the development of the regions where we operate. In Itabira, Vale is helping to transform the city into an educational and technological innovation hub. One of the initiatives is the empowerment of the city's teaching staff from primary to higher education, the modernization of engineering programs, and the incubation of technology-based businesses. In October 2019, Vale signed an agreement to invest BRL 100 million on the expansion of the campus of the Federal University of Itajubá in the city of Itabira. The partnership involving the municipal government, the university, and Vale aims to support Itabira so the city can become an educational and open innovation hub in the state of Minas Gerais and further contributes to reduce the city's economic dependency on the mining activity.
This was done in consultation with society. This has been an aspiration for them for a long time, and even the architectural designs are very bold. This will lead a lot of self-esteem and will make a true impact in the vicinity of the city of Itabira. Okay, we will lead in many things. However, we heard you, and we know that we have gaps, especially in governance. We talked about ESG, but in governance, we made a survey. We'll identify the gaps, and Eduardo, back on stage, will give you an idea of some of them which we're tackling.
Luciano. Well, as you saw, I think we have the chance, and we will do it, but the sixth pillar is key to, how to say, amalgamate these decisions. We talk to investors, shareholders, opinion makers, NGOs. We map the gaps. We already are acting on them. Of course, they run through the ESG. 40% are in G, 40 is in S, and some-- sorry, in E, and some in the social part. Just to give you some flavor, those things are already undergoing. On the social side, the new gender balance. Vale is no different from several industries. It has a low gender balance, so we need to double that. We have a goal for double from 16%- 26% by 2030. On the environmental side, it's certifying all of our operations in ISO 14001 that deals with operational excellence towards environment.
On the governance side, we are establishing the audit committee on 2020. On the human rights, that goes back to the social, we engaged in a very interesting process now of a public consultation. We revised the policy, going back to the fact that talking is better. It's a good decision that we made. I would like to finalize here with a very important thing, and I think it's new in the sense that we will be the big three miners that are going to put ESG on their long-term compensation. I think we might say, "Look, these guys are looking for 50, are looking to 30. Let's put your money where your mouth is." ESG is a governance gap as well. It's being asked for us to do it, and we align those ambitious goals together with that.
For that, we are glad to tell you that yesterday, right? Yeah, yesterday we launched a transparency portal that shows this action plan to exactly as we've been saying, give each time more transparency. I'll invite you to have a quick view on how it works, and later, please go online.
The ESG portal is the new Vale transparency channel. Here you will find important company information such as repair actions, reuse of water resources, and electricity management, as well as info on sustainability, payment policy, safety measures, and performance. Everything is organized into areas of interest. A way to promote easy and democratic access to important company information in a transparent manner. Visit vale.com/esg and get to know our new portal.
Okay. Let's shift gear a little bit to the other three pillars. Just to recap, I think we will make strides on reparation for sure. We are doing it. We're improving effectively our governance about safety, and the impact of society is embedded already in our actions and goals. Now, Spinelli will come and discuss how are we going to bring back our flexibility, our competitiveness, but not that only, but how we're going to behave ourselves in the future, what opportunities do we have. Later, Mark Travers will come and explain how our work at Base Metals is being dealt with, the transformation, and the opportunities that arise from that. Last, Luciano is going to come and wrap up how are we going to allocate capital, what options, opportunities we have. In the end, I'll come back and do a wrap up. Okay, Spinelli, please.
Thank you, Eduardo. Well, business strategy for iron ore is about de-risking. If you want to talk about de-risking, we need to talk about the resumption of operations, of capacity, and about the cost level of 2018. That was the best in the world. Nevertheless, this is a mantra today. I'm really committed, and also our team, really committed to people, safety of people and asset integrity. Well, talking about resumption of operation. After Brumadinho tragedy, you know very well we've been talking about this through the year. We lost 93 million tons of capacity. During the year, we reestablished a lot of the operations. We still have 40 million tons of capacity that still need to come back. We are planning to go back, come back with 15 million tons next year and another 25 million tons in 2021.
It's important to understand that the way we're going to return is divided in two main phases, just to simplify the process. The first phase is about returning with mechanical dismantling without any impact in the operation of the dams. When you do this, we can get the volumes back, but not the quality back as we used to have. It's important to understand capacity means quality and volumes also. The second phase is related to the improvement of the dams. When we improve the dams, we can get the wet processing, the quality, and the end of the process is to use the blast for the mining process, and you get the efficiency back. That's the roadmap for the return of the operations. It's very important to say that we've been through a phase that we need to assess all the risk we have in our dams.
I want to point three cases that just happened two months ago, and today, we have an update about this. Two months ago, we had a problem with the Viga operation in Ferrous that we found a problem in a permit. We stopped operation as a risk assessment. Now we reestablished the operation the last Friday. One month ago, our team, led by Vale, found a problem in Itabiruçu dam that is related to Itabira operation. We decided to improve the assessment, and the investigation for that dam. We have good news. We are anticipating part of the production that we are delaying. That's impact that is positive. Based on assessing new problems, if we need to go further, understand what is going on, we can decide, myself, my team, Carlos' team to make it happen. Today, just happened another case.
In Laranjeiras Dam, that is for Brucutu operation, the last week, using analysis of satellites, we found that there's a small crack in the top of the dam. My team called me, actually, this morning. Called me and Carlos himself. We've got to stop the operation. We're going to reduce 60% of the production. We need another one month to check it out what is going on. After one month, we can return. That's the kind of decision we're going to face during the year. That's very important to say that is all related to safety. After that, we can return to operations with volumes and quality. Let's talk about what is expected for capacity the next year and the next years. This is the production for next year. We expect for production a number between 340 and 355.
In 2- 3 years, we can reestablish the capacity of the operation capacity that we had in 2018. The important message here is that value over volume is a key strategy for Vale. If we don't have the necessity to supply the clients in terms of quality or in terms of volumes, we can adjust the production to fit the right necessity for the market. This is the brand new number that is new for you. Another information here that we have the production for pellets next year, we are estimating 49 million tons of pellets production. Another important information, that this is an annual number, and we are returning gradually. The first half of next year will be impacted. We need to restore the BRBF quantity in China. We've sold more than we produced in this year.
We have to recover the quantity there. Also, we have this evolution of quality process during the year. The first half, it's unbalanced if you compare to the second half of the year. It's another important information for you. Well, let's talk about competitiveness. I want to share in three steps here. Let's talk about the cost divided in three phases. First one, C1, the cost from the mine to the Brazilian ports. We expect to reach again in four or five years, BRL 13- BRL 13.5. That's the same cost that we were running last year. What are we going to do with this? First one, if you return to the operations, we can dilute the fixed cost. It's really directly linked. Second lever here is about efficiency. We've been investing a lot in digital transformation, automation, autonomous truck. We're going to reinforce.
There's my challenge and my job here to make our operations more and more efficient. I want to emphasize one thing here. This is negative here. We're going to increase our cost because we are using filters to make our operations safer without the use of the dam. We want to offset this increase of course, using the efficiency that we have in our operations. This is a long to midterm view of what we have in our operations. The second part of the cost is about the freight. This is a good news. We are on the right track. You know very well about our strategy to have big vessels. The Valemaxes is going really well. You know also very well that we can reduce 40% of the emissions using the Valemaxes compared to Capesize.
The freight in mid-term, long-term will be around 16. Next year, specific, we have the IMO regulation, also you know very well about this. We need to use the low sulfur bunker. Today, the spread between low sulfur and high sulfur is about $200. What we are doing to offset this problem? We are using the scrubbers. Scrubbers is a technology that you can use a high sulfur bunker and reduce this gap. Another possibility is the supply-demand of low sulfur bunker can be more balanced and the price of low sulfur can go down. In this case, this year, 76% of the fleet will be with the scrubbers installed. In two years, 96%-99%. That's the way you see the freight. Another component of our efficiency and competitiveness is about the premiums.
This is something really tricky that we need to go. This is a complex slide. I want to walk through them. Just to remind you know very well about this, that the premiums is a function of steel margins, steel industry, and the coking coal price. This is a table that you compare the 65 index and the 62 index and the spread between them. If you have steel margins going higher, our clients are stimulated to use better ores, high quality ores to make the production more efficient. If you combine this with a higher cost of energy, they can save more if they use a high quality ore. If you see this table, what happened last year was the right side and the upside here. A premium spread about 22%. What happened this year was the opposite.
The middle of this year was on the lower side and the left side. If you walk through what happened this year, I just want to remind you know very well about this, but remember that we had a problem with the balance of supply demand after Brumadinho, and also had problems with the Australians, that they had problem with the weathers. The index went up. When the index went up, we invited other competitors to go to the market, like the concentrates in China, other concentrates from other places in the world that went to the market. Steel price declined. First, trade war. Second, China boosting their production to fight against trade war. The margins just narrow. That's the end of the cave of this year. Now what we have, what is going on, the margins are coming back.
Not the level that happened last year. We are something between the 12 here, and we see that the model is going really well. It is a strong to explain the model. In long-term, what we see, that the margins will stabilize in something in the middle. The price, the index, can be something between 60 and 80. Well, to summarize this, what you see, that our business is still a strong business. In 2018, our EBITDA breakeven, the cost of the three components that's just mentioned was BRL 28.5. What we see next year, we're going to go back to BRL 28-BRL 30 if you compare to all the initiatives that we just mentioned. If you consider $60 per ton, the lower cost that we forecast, this is a business that we have 50% of margin. It was a strong operation.
Let's talk about the future, about what we see in the future. Luciano just mentioned that our clients are claiming for solutions about emissions. In Europe, they are really under pressure. The cost of the CO2 there is already BRL 30-BRL 40 a ton. What we are doing to face this, we are the best company in the world for iron ore to face this challenge. We already have a great portfolio of quality products that we can face this. This is an example. Today, if you simulate what is the impact of our product in the production of our clients, we can save 30 million tons of CO2 today just using the best ores in the world like Carajás Fines. It's about 9% of their emissions. This Scope 3, what we call Scope 3.
We have in our portfolio more than 85% based on high quality products. You know very well our portfolio. I want to just reemphasize here the GF88 is a new product. This is a ground Carajás fines that we are doing grounding in China to supply the festive pellet feed that we are expanding pelletizing plants in China. We don't need to use water, just ground it and supply that. This is a market of 30 million tons of pellet feed that we're going after that. This year, probably we're going to supply 5 million-7 million. We are just launching this product this year. We can go beyond, and that's what Luciano mentioned about metallics. Well, our clients are struggling about how can they reduce. They have problems to end of capacity in some part of their assets.
They need to achieve the new goals about CO2. What do they have in place? HBI is an example. HBI Brazil will now with the pre-salt, we have a lot of natural gas. How can you use these industrialized plants in Brazil and use natural gas to transform iron and reduce iron, use the HBI technology? That's a possibility. Bring the clients to Brazil. It's like a pelletizing plant of the future. We can go beyond in the chain and bring them to talk about that. We're establishing a lot of conversation with our clients to bring the technology, the supply, and the location. Second alternative here is about what you call green pig iron. We already have in place, in-house for 15 years, the Tecnored technology. We just did an industrial trial to produce the pig iron.
Pig iron can be used in the electric furnace during all the chain of our clients. If you compare here, the effect when you make the pig iron with the Tecnored using the biomass, we just tried using 50% of biomass and 50% of thermal coal, we can reduce 50% the emissions of our clients. We're working hard to design something that we can use 100% of biomass with our clients to supply them in a new kind of technology. And I say more, we have other things that are coming, and we have a lot of people, technical people design new products to fulfill this kind of solutions. Something will be coming in the future. Just to wait one more minute. To summarize what we're talking here.
Well, first thing, we have to understand that the return of our operations is something that we need to do step by step. Save first, every time. If you find something, stop, go deeper, check, and return. That's the mindset. That's what we said. That's what Carlos said. We need to understand that we're going to decide, and it'll be often this. Every time we design something, it's because we are leading this. Second information, we're going to return our efficiency, definitely. We have many things, many work to do despite the return of the volumes, but you have obviously to return to the volumes respecting the value over volume, for sure. Thirdly, I can say that we are ready now to face the challenge of our clients considering the CO2 emissions, all the effect of the pressure of the society. We can say more.
We're going beyond, join the chain, bring other technologies, and be really close to our clients to solve their problems. Now, I call my friend here, Mark, to continue with the base metal strategy. Thank you.
Please. Thanks, Marcelo. Good afternoon, everyone. Marcelo just concluded his presentation by speaking about some of the opportunities we have with our iron ore products in a greener future. I want to talk to you today about some of the opportunities we have in the nickel business. We're in the middle of the journey of the turnaround of the base metals business, a transformation in the business. There's also an incredible opportunity here as nickel plays a key role in the EV and renewable energy-driven world. Nickel is poised for a dramatic change in its market. Nickel in the electric vehicle is a key commodity that will improve the performance of the battery. It'll improve the cost. It will enable the mass adoption of the electric vehicle. I want to talk to you a little bit about what we see in the market.
Of course, with the mass adoption electric vehicle, we see incredible increase in demand for nickel. I want to talk to you a little bit about what's going to happen in the supply of nickel to match that demand. Currently, we have an excess of supply of what we call Class 1 nickel, high purity nickel. Right now, we have high inventories, and that type of nickel is going into supplying the electric vehicle market and the nickel sulfate. However, that won't last. It won't be enough come two, three, four years down the road. What we're going to need to see is laterite ores being processed primarily through high-pressure acid leach technology.
It's a technology that our industry has not been quite successful at and so we have a clear challenge in our industry to meet the demand through this type of supply. Overall, as we look forward over the next few years, we see the tightening of the supply-demand metrics, and we see a trifurcation of the market. We're going to see separate supply-demand dynamics for Class 1 products or high-quality nickel in the stainless steel industry, and finally, the battery industry. I'm going to talk to you a little bit now about how we've developed our commercial strategy to meet these developments in the nickel market. Vale has incredible strengths in the Class 1 market. We have a broad range of high-purity types of products in different forms that can be used in many different applications.
It's a part of our industry that hasn't been strong recently because of excess supply that I mentioned earlier that is currently going to the battery industry. Obviously, that's going to tighten, and it's going to be our strategy to recover and to strengthen our market share in this industry. We want to be exposed to the LME pricing on this LME-deliverable nickel and play the dynamics that will play out in the premiums as the demand for this type of product increases. We will look for selective opportunities in the EV market as well as the stainless steel market. In the stainless steel market, we have opportunities with robust potential returns to expand our operations, for example, in Onça Puma. In the battery industry, we will be selective and look for opportunities.
I will talk to you a little bit about a greenfield project in Indonesia, which is well suited for the battery industry. We can also play the game as the market tightens and the premiums increase, and as the demand increases for battery products. Our powder products are very well suited for batteries. If the market demands it with better premiums for the batteries, we have the opportunity and the option to shift over to that type of market. As I mentioned, base metals is in a journey to transform its business. We have not been a reliable operator, and in fact, this year, we are suffering from issues with our assets. We need to invest in our assets and become a safe and reliable operator. We're spending a great deal of effort and resources in our asset integrity and also bolstering our preventative maintenance programs.
Another key component of the transformation is the investment in our replacement mines in Canada. Currently, we have very significant investments in the Voisey's Bay underground mine and the Copper Cliff mine extension in Sudbury. This demands a very high amount of capital in the next two to three years. It's very important to say that we will be cash flow positive in this transitional period. To secure that, we initiated and announced a nickel hedging strategy, which will help secure our cash flows next year at good prices. As we move forward and as we solidify this transformation, we have options for growth, which are primarily in Indonesia at the current moment, and I'll talk to you about that in a moment. As we move through this period of transition, we see robust cash generation opportunities in our business.
To secure the future and to secure the optionality for growth in Indonesia, we have our contract of work, which will expire in 2025, and we're working hard to secure that extension at a time. We just announced the signing of a heads of agreement with a state-owned entity, Inalum, to meet our divestment requirements in Indonesia. This will be a clear milestone in our path to extending that contract of work in 2025. It brings along a very important strategic partner in Indonesia, where we'll see a lot of that growth occur, and which I referred to earlier as the HPAL projects to supply the battery industry. Just a little bit on the opportunities we have within our business portfolio. Our Sorowako processing facility has been a very successful operation for decades, and we have the opportunity to expand that.
We have a current project that we're looking at to expand by another 10,000 tons of ferronickel. We also have two greenfield projects, and it's very important to be very clear here. While we will maintain 100% interest in the mines in Indonesia, we will look to bring in partners in these greenfield projects to de-risk the project and to ensure that we will not be funding at a Vale level these projects. All of these projects on this page will be funded at the PT Vale Indonesian subsidiary level and will not demand cash resources at the parent level. What does all of this mean? I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the production numbers for base metals. These numbers do not include the production from Vale New Caledonia, okay? Luciano will speak to you in a few moments about why that's the case.
As I mentioned, we're currently struggling with our production, but we are investing in our assets, and we do see improvements coming. We are currently producing at a rate of about 210,000 tons per annum, not including New Caledonia. We see the opportunity to increase very quickly up to 240,000 tons as we bring online some of these investments in North America, in Canada, as well as the opportunity to bring on the second furnace in Onça Puma, which is an excellent project. In the future, as we bring on stream the Indonesian growth projects, we see opportunities to grow up to 360,000 tons. Just like nickel, there's great opportunities for copper in this electric vehicle and a renewable energy world.
In addition to the traditional industrial applications of copper, we see tremendous opportunities for copper in the EV engine, as well as in the renewable energy industry. Just as the mines in copper are depleting and the grades are decreasing. We have a lot of faith, incredible opportunities in copper. I want to talk to you a little bit about our growth opportunities in our current portfolio in copper. We're currently producing around 400,000 tons per annum, and in the short term, we have the ability, in 2021, to get up to about 430,000 tons as we increase production in our Canadian operations as well as our Sossego mine. Our Salobo III growth project will start to come online and ramp up in 2022, 2023. We're going to see a very significant increase in production coming from the Salobo III in that point.
In the future, I'll just highlight a few opportunities for us. Last year at Vale Day, we talked to you about the Victor mine in Canada. It's a mine that sits alongside the Glencore Nickel Rim Mine, and we're jointly studying the opportunity for a joint development of this mine. It's going very well. We expect that we will be making a project sanction decision in the second half of next year. We also have the Alemão project in the Carajás region of Brazil, which has the ability to bring on another 60,000 tons. Again, the project decision will be the second half of next year. Finally, I want to highlight an incredibly large project that we have been exploring in Indonesia called Project Hu'u in the island of Sumbawa.
It's a copper gold project, which has the capacity to produce, at current estimates, about 250,000 tons per annum. In summary, we're turning around the base metals business at a time when we're getting ready for the market opportunities. If we secure this transition, and we will, we will see a period of robust cash generation and returns in the future. At this point, I'll pass it back to Luciano.
Where does all of this lead us? Where is the opportunity? What's the equity story for Vale today? Why should you consider investing in our company? You notice probably that we spent 70% of this presentation talking about safety, reparation, sustainability, because we're very mindful that there's a cloud of risk hanging on top of Vale. We'll spare no efforts to reduce that risk to the benefit of the valuation of the stock as well. Three key things I would like to call your attention to. The first one under the Vale opportunity is the business. If you summarize, if you look at this chart, our core businesses in the next three years, and please bear in mind, we're talking about three years, 2022 is a key year for Vale, all the three businesses are going to be in a much better shape.
Iron ore production will come back. We've been saying since the very first, the aftermath of the Brumadinho tragedy, that it would take two to three years to normalize. It will take two to three years to normalize, but it will normalize. Remember we said S11D will take four years to ramp up? The fourth year is next year, in the plan, we have 91 kilotons of production from S11D. These things will happen. We are obsessed with creating the conditions for this to happen, and the competitiveness will come back. Nickel, as Mark showed you, will also improve production. We will slowly bring back the production we took offline. Copper, you're seeing the growth. If you do the math, between 10%-30% growth from today's position in all of our business. At a low cost. We always show you the CapEx numbers.
Here are they again. The long-term CapEx for Vale continues to be seen at a level of BRL 4.5 billion. There will be no offense towards the cash flows from excess CapEx. You notice also that next year and the year after, you have $5 billion. That's different from last year. Why $5 billion? Because of the investments in filtering and in dry stacking that Spinelli mentioned that are being front-loaded. They would spread out over 10 years. They're going to be concentrated in order to eliminate tailings dams and their consequences in the short term. The big picture doesn't change from 2022 onwards. That's the first opportunity. The business will improve dramatically over three years. The second opportunity is what is outside of the core business.
We do have a lot of cash flow drains outside of business, and we will attack them vigorously. The first ones are Moatize, Vale New Caledonia, and the other JVs. These other assets have bold plans to attack them. Let's start with Moatize. Look at what is written on the left-hand side. A short-term shock will lead to strong gains in near-term cash flows. The reason why we messed up in Moatize this year is because the ore body was not sufficiently drilled, and it disappointed us in the sections we're mining today. It's very poor quality. We're changing completely the mine plan. It will reduce, yes, the life of mine. It will reduce, yes, the reserves. You saw the impairments. We're going to go after the good stuff, and especially the coking coal yields are also going to go up.
That's the left-hand side of the plan. The right-hand side of the plan, we're talking about the process plant. The process plant was not made to treat the ore that we were taking from the ground this year. We will stop the process plant for three months. We will produce nothing for three months to fix all the issues and glitches and to even make changes in the flow sheet to make sure that the process plant now is adequate to the new mining plan. We're going to come back in the second half of 2020. Our goal is to come back at a 15 million ton rate, at which the asset is EBITDA positive. That's the plan. I keep pressuring the guys, "Is this going to work, guys?" Far, they're promising me that it will. We'll see. Vale New Caledonia.
We are working on different scenarios to exit VNC. We have communicated this to the French authorities, both in France and in the South Province. What has changed that prompt us in this direction? Three things. First, we were not able to take VNC production to the levels we intended to. Something on the technology, we're missing it. The second reason is that there's more people now engaged with that technology around the world. To make nickel sulfide for batteries from laterites that we have in New Caledonia and in Indonesia, you require HPAL technology, precisely what you have there. There's a lot of people looking into this technology, and we believe that some of them also have a better grasp of it than we do.
The third thing is that New Caledonia produces intermediates, which were disregarded a few years ago, but today are very important intermediates for the battery industry. There's an opportunity, yes, to maybe change the flow sheet ourselves or others in order to fix what's happening in the asset. By the first half of 2020, we will tell you what is the path going forward. That's not all what's on the table. This table over here shows that in 2019, if you do the math, almost $3 billion were spent outside of the core and were dragged by other assets or liabilities. We talked about Moatize in VNC, and we promise you that by 2022, again, 2022, there will be no cash outflows with those two assets. We have the stoppage expenses of all this idle iron ore production, which will not be there in 2022.
They will decrease according to the resumption of production. You have Samarco. Remember Samarco, which is still dragging cash flows, and next year it was going to be heavy because of the investments in the restart and because of Renova, the foundation commitments, which are also there, but they're expected also to come down until 2022. You have other opportunities to also reduce those cash outflows. Almost $3 billion in 2019, a negligible amount in 2022. A lot of opportunity to improve the cash flows of the company, regardless of what happens in the outside world. I'm going to jump through that, you can see also there's an updated table here, with the expenses of Brumadinho expected to reparation of Brumadinho. They will still be there in 2022, they also have a path downwards. We can discuss this in Q&A if you want to.
That's the second opportunity. The cash flows of the business, regardless what happens outside, will improve because we will attack the inefficiencies. Finally, when you put all those cash flows together, again, 2022 is the reference date here. You see the EBITDA to the left, cash flows to the right, different scenarios for iron ore and nickel prices. First thing that calls attention is obviously this is very robust on the left-hand side. Secondly, the translation between EBITDA towards cash flows is also very impressive. Most importantly, and that's the third opportunity, how are these cash flows going to translate into valuation? The valuation today is very low because you perceive very high risks hanging on Vale.
That's why we spent 70% of our time showing you that we are obsessed with reducing that level of risks to make sure that the company has the proper valuation. What would be that valuation? There's an exercise here. You have three scenarios of EBITDA for 2022. Those scenarios, they come from the table of the last page. You can then go to the site and make your own math. We're just saying, guys, that with a lower level of risk, we may come back to the 5.5, perhaps 6 times EBITDA multiples that we had 10 years ago, for example. From today's four, less than four perhaps, that's why de-risking is so important. If we do that, we will have a firm value. For example, take the middle column just as an example of close to $100 billion less the net debt.
You have the market cap, and if you add up the free cash flow accumulated from here to there, which will be on the balance sheet, which will reduce that or will be distributed, you get to a total shareholder return in excess of 25%. 2022, three years only. That's what we intend to deliver to you. Eduardo, for your closing remarks.
Thanks, Luciano. Well, I hope we were successful in lead you through the road map. I think there is effective intent to execute. The way we see, making an analogy, it's not a sprint, it's much more a marathon. Two things you can expect from Vale is discipline and persistence. We've been, as we said, on the reparation effort, taking steps with quality, effectiveness. On the safe side, our ambition is real. We're going to pursue it, and we're giving examples of that commitment to safety. On production, we will bring it back when it's possible, but already coming and increasing our volumes and reducing or increasing our effectiveness. Lastly, as Luciano said, we are primed for a valuation if we do it right, if we keep our discipline. I think just to conclude, we have to take this opportunity to create a better Vale.
Vale that adjusts its processes, its products, aligned what demands of the society. For that, I would like to thank you for your attention, and let's go to the Q&A. Thank you. I think they're gonna arrange the seats here. Oh, oops. Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, you go.
Hi, guys. Chris Terry from Deutsche Bank, just over here. I had three questions. Two in iron ore and then one in base metals. The questions in iron ore relate to, you put up the production numbers. I just wondered if you could comment on what you need to replenish from your Malaysian and China stockpiles as a result of 2019, in 2020 and forward. That was the first one in iron ore. The second one in iron ore is just around the pellet market. If you could comment on China's activities and what's happening within China's own pellet market. The question on base metals just relates to hedging. Just wanted to make sure in the medium term, I understood. You're hedging at the moment, but in the medium term, the plan would be to remove that hedging, not to continue that. Those are my questions. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you.
Well, regarding the production, this is the way we see the plan for production. We need to understand capacity and production, sometimes the numbers are different, because we can reestablish capacity regarding volumes, but not the quality yet. We are planning the limit to lower quality products to blend Carajás Fines to get the BRBF. The constraint is how can we ramp up this and reach that? The range is for if you have some ups and downs, like if we need to lead some different investigation or supply in a different way. We have that range to guarantee that the momentum will be there. We are on track to return the production with all the investigation and authorization of the third parties, the prosecutors and the agency in Brazil to make it happen. That's the way we're going to return.
Your question?
Maybe to add. We could have made a plan to produce 370 million tons, for example. As he mentioned, the quality is such and the cost is so high because of all the restrictions towards production in the south, it's simply not worth it. That's where the value over volume approach kicks in.
Yeah. If you have a discount, a lower, high silica product, the discount is $20. We need to balance that to return step by step, right quality to the right market. Okay? The pellets you ask about, pellets in China, right? If you understand. Well, we don't sell pellets in China. If you have any sale there, it's a spot sale for just some adjustment, but that's not the premium market for us. We go to Middle East or Europe or Japan. That's the main market for pellets. What we are developing is that they are increasing their plans to reduce the sinter. The problem of pollution in China is not regarding CO2, but more related to dust.
They want to reduce the use of the sintering process, moving to the blast furnace, and the pellets is good because you can go directly to the blast furnace. That's the reason they're increasing that. You will need pellet feed. We want to sell pellet feed to them using Carajás Fines, transforming, just changing the grains of the Carajás, grounding the Carajás Fines, and fulfill the pellets. That's the way we want to be in the pellet market, feeding the pellet feed. On hedging, unlike iron ore, we are price takers in nickel. Nickel prices are decided by what happens in China and in Indonesia, and not by the traditional producers. We saw the window of opportunity. We hedged about 30% of our production until 2020. You can look at the financial statements to see the derivatives position. That window has closed.
One of the key strategic reasons why we did this is because we do have substantial cash outflows in the nickel business in 2020 and 2021. We wanted to make sure that the business itself could stand its own expenditures, and therefore securing, in this transition, a higher price.
Luciano, just to add, I think both right. Afterwards, we knew there was a speculation.
Yeah
The price that wouldn't be sustainable. I think more important is to sustain the investment that we have to do in this transition period.
Thanks, guys. Just to follow up on the first point around the iron ore. I understand the production ramp, but just wondering if you could make a few more comments on your sales expectations and some of the moving parts on restocking and different parts of the business to think about the sales that we might see in 2020. Thanks.
We used to give guidance of production since last year. Actually, we changed this year after Brumadinho. We are going to return to talk about production as a guidance for you. What can I say that the number is quite the same, but there are some unbalanced if you compare some quarters. We are, again for BRBF, we need to restock to get flexibility in the operation in China. We have some imbalance in the beginning of the year, first quarter and second quarter. We see this as a picture of the market, not only for Vale, but also the imbalance from China still with high production and the seasonal production of Australians and all. Also Vale just a little bit lower. The imbalance is there. We're going to talk about production as a guidance for this year.
Thank you. Daniel Sasson from Itaú BBA. Thanks for the presentation and for the updates on the efforts you're doing on the compensations, reparations for Brumadinho. My first question is related to ESG and capital allocation. Probably with all these efforts that you're doing to become more ESG friendly, ESG focused, does it make sense to maintain all of your businesses or are you strategically considering divesting some of your businesses? In the sense that maybe talking a bit about the iron ore production in the northern system, which is where you do have dry processing and higher quality, are you planning to expand production in the northern system, maybe to replace part of the production in Minas Gerais?
Do you think that's something that could make or could help you guys to move from the 30, 40% dry processing today to the 70% in a few years, which is your goal? Thank you.
I think the first question. We don't see yet. We are reviewing our portfolio towards a risk analysis for sure. It has to do with ESG as well. Still, we didn't have to take any decisions about that. I think VNC was one that we already mentioned. It doesn't fit in our portfolio. The skills that are needed to run that are not here. It's a matter of accepting the facts and of course, it adjusts into a better portfolio of risks for sure. That's an ongoing process. We are, of course, doing that. Now I don't see on capital allocation specific issues now on that sense. About iron ore, we just ran our master plan for the next five years. It balances. We need the product. I think some people sometimes don't understand the fact that we need to do both systems.
We cannot only produce Carajás, but we know that we have the flexibility to expand Carajás if needed on a cost base, on a margin basis that we're going to take. I don't know if Spinelli wants to elaborate a little bit more, but fundamentally is that. On the level of our five-year plan, we are balancing both systems.
Yeah. I think BRBF is going really well. It will become the base of the best furnace in China in years. We need to plan. The name of the game is quality. You just saw all the pressures regarding the CO2 emissions. Carajás is the key product for Vale. We are studying some expansion to reach an S11D 150. It's under study, this possibility. Step by step from 90, 100, 120 and 150. It's very important to replace some capacity even in north, we can go to the market. If you respect the available volume, we will be ready for that. Considering that we have lower quality in the south, you can blend. You're right, the trend is, okay, it's higher quality, with the BRBF, we've been really succeeding with this product.
We're going to keep this.
Thiago Lofiego from Bradesco BBI. When can we expect, Eduardo, the collective moral damage agreement to be sealed with authorities, with the CF Brumadinho? Can we expect that for this year still, or is this something that can linger on for a few months more? Then within that scope, when should we expect you guys to come back and reinstate a dividend policy? Do you think first half of next year should be a reasonable timing for us to expect that? You don't have a specific timing in your head?
Could you repeat the second question, please?
Second question is restatement of the dividend policy.
Okay, fine.
Would the first half of 2020 make sense for us to expect you to announce that?
Okay.
Yeah
answer first the first question. I think we are undergoing a discussion with the government, with the prosecutors, with the judicial system. There's an expectation that we might come to an agreement, but it's not feasible to do it this year. I don't think there's an expectation now due to the complexity of stakeholders. Remember that we have several lawsuits, in a sense, one for environment, one for socioeconomic. You shouldn't expect some big bang to solve everything. We believe there will be an agreement around compensation and reparation for environment, an agreement for socioeconomic, for compensation and reparation. Those both things, and as you saw, as you said, I think there's several agreements around that are supporting that. It's not feasible to do it, as I mentioned, because there are several stakeholders. People has to be connected.
There's a leadership going on around that through the government. The process, I would say, is undergoing well, but will take time. Dividend, we have to keep our speech. Preparation is improving. I think we were able to show to you today. When time comes, the time will be announced. We don't want to give no deadlines or first half, second half, but we'll restore when is the time.
It's important. Since we provisioned for the reparation estimated outflows, we've always been considering those types of agreements. For example, ever since we made a provision for the environmental liabilities in the second quarter of this year, we put into that provision the estimate that we have of where those conversations are going. For example, you saw in the news sanitation. Sanitation has been discussed. It's been discussed for months now in a row. It's there. It's already reserved there. Those conversations are not new. They've been there for a while.
Given recent conversations, do you see any scope for more provisions, or you guys are comfortable with the provision levels you've done?
We're comfortable with the provisions so far.
The last question here from me on ESG, back to ESG. You mentioned the 2030 targets and the gaps. What are more specific milestones that we should be watching in the next maybe 2-3 years? Something like shorter term for us to be following.
Good question. First of all, I think the ESG goals we are discussing that, we believe that we can close most of them around 2021 to 2022. There are some more practical goals, like ISO 14001. Takes time. It's not unreasonable to see. That goes back to the transparency portal. We're going to follow up there all the evolution for that. Governance, things that I was going to say. Sorry, let me go back. A lot of this stuff is already disclosure. We had insight, and we're going to disclose. That's why out of the gaps that we have, we believe we've closed already 40%. The remaining, as I mentioned, is like 40% in governance, 40% in environment, and 20% in social.
One thing that is very important to bear in mind is that when next year we close the shareholder agreement finished, like one big thing for the governance is independent committee, no the independence of the board will be, in a way, solved. Everybody that comes to after is going to be assigned as an independent. We believe there is this ESG difference will be taking two years to three years, and we can follow up on the portal, the goals for that. That's why we defined this roadmap. Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah. Daniel McConvey, Rossport Investments. Talking with a Brazilian friend of mine, who knows your company well, in the events of the last two or three years, she maintains that part of the issue is part of the culture and maybe the Latin American macho Brazilian culture, where managers going up the chain of management are less likely to be forthcoming if there's a problem. In other words, be totally transparent if there's something that's not in their control underneath or that they're not controlling properly. Is that the case? If so, how do you address it?
Okay. Thanks for the question. I think there's two questions. One, we cannot infer something for a cause that we don't know. The efforts that we are doing around the solving or finding the solutions from the accident is being taken. Let's put it this way, because that's very important to level off. First of all, we have an independent committee that's directed to the board. We did our own internal panel of specialists that is almost coming to an end now. We will have the, how can I say that, the findings about what was the cause of the accident. Inferring causes now is, of course, premature, and we might not even solve the problem if we attack them. On the flip side, everything can be improved. Everything has to be improved.
Of course, flow of information, VPS, as what Carlos mentioned here, it's the basis of Toyota Production System. Any system that you see on total quality, what we want to do? Expose problems, solve problems, improve, get to a level of efficient excellence that helps risk. Remember when I said we didn't put safety and risk area. We say safety and operational excellence, because the support for the safety will be operational excellence. Operational excellence happens when you have flow of information, you have capability, you have people trained to do several things. I would be mindful that we are working on that. When Carlos mentioned cultural transformation, we need to create chronic and ease for everything. That's one thing that is in the industry. That's why we want to foster that.
I would be very mindful not to infer consequences for something that we don't know yet what happened.
How do you encourage managers to be more forthcoming?
Sorry?
How do you encourage your managers up the management chain to be more forthcoming if there is a problem they're not disclosing?
I think everything happens as normal flow. It flows naturally. We do performance meetings. We talk to people. I walk around. Spinelli has an approach to do that as well. The creation of the second line of defense. It's check and balances, talking to people, creating an environment that people want to talk, that's all. You have to do that in all companies. I work for other companies besides Vale. You have to do it everywhere. That's the fostering that you have by walking the talk, and I think we're doing that with actions that you're perceiving here.
Okay. Thank you.
Not only talk about the flow of people, but technicians along the chain to give information better and better.
I think your question is key because I think it's in my speech, by the way. Remember we said preparation, people, and safety. We think those three things work together. People is the center of everything. Either the technician, either the director, everybody has to be involved. That's what we're trying to foster to create a better company in any situation, in any condition. I think even the Brumadinho event creates a powerful movement towards that goal, and even though it might not be the case for the case of the accident.
Carlos Alba with Morgan Stanley. First question is regarding the discussion with the prosecutors in terms of the flow of information and the details about the dam that collapsed. There had been some news suggesting that some people that did investigations believe that Vale did not provide full information on the dam conditions. Have you had conversations with the prosecutors on this? Do you know what are they thinking and if you could be charged under a different law that could result in an incremental liability from what you have booked? The second one, Luciano, maybe you can give us an update on the uses of cash flows to take care of the off-balance sheet liabilities. Any timing and details, that'll be useful.
Let me go to the first one. Carlos, just go back to the previous question. We don't know yet the causes. What we are doing, and we're saying that we're supporting the investigations with everything that we can. As soon as we have the information, we'll pass to you. It's too premature to infer anything. There's an external investigation doing by the authorities. There's internal investigation doing by the board. When those things come public, we'll deal with it, but we don't know yet. I think the second question is about?
The only update I may give you is that we tend to withdraw the MBR preferred shares this year already. We're hoping to retire them. It's around $800 million. As you saw, there's about $200 million cash outflows this year alone on those preferred shares, and we intend to retire those preferred shares.
Hi. Chad Berger from Goldman Sachs. Thanks for the presentation. I have two questions. First, on the guidance of iron ore. You're providing now, again, guidance on iron ore production, given that this year you provide the guidance on sales. If you can comment a little bit what expectations in terms of sales for next year, how is the inventory level at Vale throughout the chain? Also, what's your expectation in terms of Chinese steel production? Second, on what is my understanding that you are trying to give a shock in the operations to try to improve the profitability. How do you see this business in the medium long term? Would you consider to divest from this business? What is the end game on the coal business? Thank you.
Okay. Well, on an an annual basis, what we expect the sales will be quite the same as the production. There'll be some imbalance moments that we have lower production with lower quality and the necessity to restore the BRBF stocks. There are some difference between the quarter. In terms of volumes during the year, we expect the same number, just to understand that. You ask another thing.
Second one was about steel.
No. Other thing about iron ore.
Steel production.
Steel production in China.
If you comment on steel production China, what is your view and expectations for next year?
Well, we see the production will be stable, as is the same we expect this year, something between 930 million- 1 billion tons. That's to be the same. We see a strong stimulus to infrastructure coming. There is a delay for the result in the end of the year. We have some information they are coming better. Also, there's spike now for industry. Their recovery is something the last month was really good. We don't build in this area. The other part is regarding the real estate. Real estate is still our locomotive of China demand for rebar. We see, if you talk to the clients, they see a stable production for next year. Talking about the winter cuts, we don't see a strong winter cuts. They're trying to keep the production.
Some specific cuts regarding the pollution in the end of the year. The combination of that is to keep the production of steel as a key gain against all the problem between trade, war, or other possibilities to keep the growth of China in 6% a year. That's our mindset. That's what we check with our clients.
About Moatize, I think it's too premature to say anything now. It's extremely, how can I say that, complex what we're trying to do. Who follows Vale know how difficult it has been to operate the mine. Not the railway, by the way, the railway we're doing fine. Talking about partnerships exiting anything now, it doesn't add value to Vale. Our focus, as Luciano mentioned, is completely on restoring the business.
Hi, Timna Tanners. Just to follow up on the Chinese steel production question. If we could try to pin you down to a little bit more precision on your, like a forecast, just because beginning of the year was 10% plus growth. Recently declined year-over-year. Do you think there'll be stimulus measures to keep forecast next year? Are you looking mid-single digits or more like this year? My second question, I'm fascinated by your HBI, DRI, pig iron discussion. How soon would you be thinking about providing those alternative metallics to customers? When you do have those discussions with, particularly European steel makers looking to reduce their carbon footprint, do they have a problem with using met coal and natural gas still? Are there other alternatives? Maybe the green pig. How far along is that?
If you could just provide a little more detail.
Well, production China is, again, we think that it will be stable, quite the same as this year, around 950, 930. It can be like this. Why? The same base for what happened this year, the current year, based on the three pillars there. Real estate is still the locomotive for demand. We have the stimulus for infrastructure coming. There's a delay to recover that. They centralize a lot of the decision for infrastructure. They're trying to decentralize this decision again, they had the problem of debts in the communities and the municipalities. They're solving this problem. We've been talking to Tsinghua University so close. We are partners in the studies for China. They are saying that they're trying to solve the pattern of the loans to bring to the central government and leave the municipalities to invest.
That's the trend that is going on, and we can see the infrastructure will return for levels, not that we saw some 10 years ago, but they'll return. Offset some problem that we can find in the real estate business, because the real estate business is just a short-term solution. It's not a long-term solution. You can have a bubble. There are concerns about how can they balance that, keep the industry, fight against all the problems they have to keep the growth and also the trade war problem. That, in this case, puts a lot of pressure in the industry goods. That's the big picture of the demand side. Combining everything, we see a stable production for next year. With some recovery. Ex-China is recovering some operations. Japan is recovering after all the problems with the weather, so they're recovering.
Going back to 2018, we have something outside in Southeast Asia that is growing in a different level, but they are growing, they are coming back. In Europe, we see a better route for growth. We can say that they're growing 2%, 3% of the ex-China globally. That's the CEO of the demand. HBI. Well, what we're doing with HBI. HBI is a proven technology in the world for more than 15 years, 20 years. You can use the HBI in many part of the process. You have a trend to use more scraps. That's the trend for China. It's a long-term trend. You can see to 2030 that it depends on the quality of the scrap. We don't see a good quality for the scrap in China. They're not going to move so fast from blast furnace to EAF.
That's a trend that will probably will go over to 2030. That's not a short-term, but really long-term transformation. On the other hand, in the U.S. even in the Europe, U.S. is based on the EAF. Europe, that's a possibility to change from the blast furnace to the EAF. That's the way we are. We can use HBI to clean, to improve the quality of the scrap. That's one possibility. The other possibility, you can use directly in the operations, in blast furnace or the EAF. We are studying with our clients, together with them. We're not going to this market and investing alone. We want to do something close. They don't want to spend a lot of CapEx, but they spend the CapEx and you can combine location, source of energy and the technology.
That's the pillars that we want to combine to supply them. That's one trend. Another one is regarding the Tecnored. Tecnored is pig iron. Pig iron for U.S. is the best product. They love pig iron. They can use this, they can correct it. It's more flexible. The way we produce pig iron in Brazil today, there are many restrictions regarding the source of energy. They use eucalyptus to make this happen, but there are some concerns about the limitation of that. When we go and bring the Tecnored, that is a better process, safer and more efficient, we can introduce the use of biomass and also blend with the thermal coal. That's another trend to discuss.
We are also developing other products, not ready yet, that we can anticipate this trend using other changing or adapting products that we are in place, in our production, like pellets. Pellets, the way we can produce pellets is a possibility to introduce solutions that we can foster and celebrate the change and the save of CO2 in these markets. It's important to understand there are different trends in these markets. China will take some more time. Europe is under pressure. USA is already done with the EAF. In all of these options, they will need good products, good iron ore. They need the pellets to feed all these possibilities. We are ready to do that. That's why Luciano said we are the best position to face all this transition to, because they will need iron ore.
There's no HBI is based on good iron ore, and pellets products to make it happen. That's the reason why we are trying to help them to localize the best solutions and give them the best product that we have.
In 10 years time, the iron ore market will be very different, and we, as the leaders, will continue to be the go-to firm to supply solutions to our clients. Only Vale has the differentiated portfolio and will continue to develop products to cater to those needs.
Caio Ribeiro here from Credit Suisse. My first question is regarding the timing of the technical report of the causes of the accident. I just wondering if you guys can provide more color when you expect that the report that was hired by the auditing firm that Vale hired to provide this report, when you expect that's coming out, and also the public prosecutor's technical report on the causes of the accident. Secondly, regarding some of the potential changes that the government is discussing to implement in regards to a special participation tax or even a change in royalties. I just wanted to see what your perspective is on where these conversations are headed and what you think will potentially change in terms of the regulatory framework and what you think today is necessary to change from the regulatory standpoint. Thank you.
Caio. I think first of all, first question, I think until the end of the year. We're expecting that until the end of the year, the technical report that we are preparing. The second one is a little bit more complex because there are several initiatives or noises. One is like exempting the Lei Kandir . We know the Lei Kandir , there was a revision undergoing in the Congress to only go after the mining sector. We understand that that's not reasonable. Of course, Vale is a part of a bigger system. We're not the only mining company in Brazil, Ibram is dealing with that through SCNE as well. We do believe there's no solid grounds to do something like that. Participation, special participation is even more complex because you have to choose which kind of taxation or royalty you do. This is again, it's constitution, it's law.
It's very hard to have two systems working together. Finally, about royalties. We've just been under an increasing royalties. You know that in 2017 that it happened. We don't believe there will be room for that kind of discussion. Brazil is undergoing a big revision on the tax system. That I think will help clarify all these issues, but it will take a little bit of time. It's natural. We think we're very grounded that the facts that we are taxed correctly, the other tax are complex to implement, even legally speaking. That's the way. Again, Vale is one of the other members from the industry that follows them, that has the same perception, and are reacting as a group to try to, of course, avoid any damage to the industry.
Thank you. One question, actually two questions from me, Andreas from UBS. First question being on your iron ore break-even costs. In the third quarter, we saw it, I think just short of $45 a ton, based on your cash cost and freight cost guidance today, I think we could be looking at a $3-$4 a ton drop in cost going forward. Based on that, should we think about your iron ore break-even cost to China in the $40-$42 a ton range going forward sustainably? That's the first question. The second question is, one of the things we've seen in China in the past 12 months is a lot of steel mills investing in scrubbers, in filtration systems, effectively allowing them to consume a lot more lower grade iron ore and possibly even move away from the higher grade iron ore consumption.
Is that how you see it as well? If so, are you adjusting your blending strategy for this particular development going into next year? Thank you.
Well, the break-even cost as I mentioned, we're going to return our level of competitiveness in a few years. As I mentioned, the key component is related to reception operation. We need the volumes to develop the cost. This is a gradual process. If we reach all the volumes that we are planning for that, obviously, if we have market for that, just to remind you, we are really concerned about value over volume, so we can change the production if you don't need the product, even quality and also volume. That'll be the step-by-step process. First tackle, we need to tackle the capacity. Second, more efficient. In the end, the trend is there. It's really solid the way we're going to have the return of the EBITDA break-even. Gradually, three, four years we'll be there. Luciano's really happy about this.
The filtering process, I mentioned also, we're going to increase the cost of that. The first one will be Vargem Grande that will be in this year, to be ready this year. The others will come in the end of 2020, 2021. There will be a process coming. This is part of that. That's the way we're going to do. We need to future that. We have another investment, as I mentioned, with the New Steel. We also have other initiatives to bring and avoid the use of the dams. That's an obsession to make it happen. It will cost. We can combine this with the possibility to operate in a better, safer way. If you compare the cost of safety, all the possibilities that we can have.
That's another thing that we can generate co-products with these fines because the co-product is the sand, silica, and it'll be a cleaner silica. We can dispose the silica to the markets. We are studying these kind of things. What we have to put in our minds that this is a cycle operation. If you can close the cycle without any disposal, any necessity of waste, we can bring the waste and turning it in products or co-products. We can stabilize and have a sustainable production. The end of the game is avoid the dams and use, in the future, the products that we are going to generate, the co-product. Transform this in co-products, not only in products. We're not ready to talk about this, but that's the mindset I want to put in your mind.
We are going to solve the necessity of dams, and after that, we want to solve the necessity to dry stacking this product and return to the society in a way that we call the share value situation. We can use this in industry like construction and other kind of necessity of the society. This is the perfect cycle we want to get. It'll take some time. There are a lot of initiatives together. We are prioritizing the futuring. After that, the reduction of the dams and next step will be to circulate all the products and all the materials in the internal cycle, in a closed cycle. That's the trend we have.
Good afternoon, everyone. Leonardo Correa from BTG Pactual. Thank you. My first question maybe for Luciano, still on the dividend topic, right? Which clearly Vale is not in position at this point to give much more detail on the dividends. Just so the market can follow and can track the additional events. Is there any specific event that Vale is waiting for to resume dividends? What should we look out for? Is it just a matter of signing the agreement with the government and then Vale would be in position to resume the announcements? Is it more of a qualitative, potentially a political decision? What exactly is the consideration for Vale? If you can add some disclosure for investors, that would be great. My second question for Spinelli, I wanted to return to the guidance for 2020 on shipments. The range is 340-355.
You'll recover 15 million tonnes of vital capacity, which maybe is a bit below what the market was expecting. How optimistic is, let's say, the mid to higher end of the range? Should 340 probably be more of a base case, considering that the first quarter of 2020 you'll be running on 70 million tonnes, more or less, of capacity. There's the typical seasonality. Just wanted to get a sense of what maybe the better number is. The impression I have is 340 is probably the better number for 2020. Just wanted to hear your thoughts. Thank you.
As you asked Luciano, I'll pass to Luciano. I think it's clearly something a little bit qualitative. Of course, if we find, we strike a deal in the environment and on the social side, of course, that would be a reason why we could move forward. We cannot attach to it because this might not be the case, because as was asked before, might be too complex to do it in one year. We don't think that has logic on that. That's the first, I think, element. We're trying hard. That's why we say all the time that the reparation effort is key to the perception. By the way, this is a decision that's been taken by the board as well. It's a collective decision that people have to perceive that the moment has arrived. That's it. I think that's fundamentally what's driving us.
It's too early to talk about that. Of course, one day we will talk about that. Unfortunately, we cannot give you a specific milestone. There's no milestone, there's no specific events that will trigger that. If Luciano can add, of course, I think that we'll all come, but this is the position from Vale and from Vale board of directors as well, not only for the management team. We are extremely focused on reparation. Extremely focused on that. That's all the time that we need to do. Of course, improving what we've just mentioned here, de-risking the company. That's what you're expecting from us. When time comes, of course, we will come to the market.
Talking about the range. For the range, you know that we have initiatives for both numbers. We can understand that we can reach the 355. That's a real possibility. On the other hand, I just mentioned here, many times we can find something that we don't know yet. Just reassessing some dams, and we can discover that we need to go deeper in some investigations so we can reduce the production. This is a good range for that. I think 350, that's the number we are going after. The range is there for ups and downs. That's our guidance.
Cicero Machado here from Wood Mackenzie. The first question is about the pellet plants, Vargem Grande and Fábrica. When do you see those coming back? The second question is about new steel technologies. Which is the major constraints with the scalability of new steel technologies? Is it CapEx or is it geology or anything else?
Fábrica will be the last to return. That site, we need many conditions to return. Regarding the dams, we have a backup dam that is under construction. We have the wall that is under construction there. That'll be ready in March, early March, something like that. Just only after that we can go to the site and make the improvements in the dam, actually. We need the production from Fábrica to the pellet feed to make the plant return. We expect this for the end of the year. We're not counting on that, but we're expecting to have this in the end of the year. That's the general plan. The second question, sorry. New Steel. New Steel, it's a great technology. It's going really well. We have a small plant that we have a trial. We are investing this year in Vargem Grande.
Vargem Grande will be the site for that trial. We're going to use all the facilities that are already installed in Vargem Grande that we can make the installation faster. We expect to have this in one year, 1.5 , the first plant. It's going really well. The technology. We have a good technical team to develop that. What is good that you can define the size of the production. You can have one million tonnes of production or two million tonnes of production. Sometimes you can be closer to the client. It's very flexible the way we're going to use the solution. We can install close to the mine, close to the client, move the ROM. We can have a flexible solution for that.
We're really happy about the evolution of the technology, and soon we're going to have good news about this.
We have room for just one more question. Sorry, we are well past time and lots of flight cancellations today as well we just heard, and so everyone need to deal with that. John.
John Tumazos. Concerning the nickel projections, the 210,000 tonnes drops to about 190 proforma of the Indonesian ownership stake changing, and you project 360. Could you tell us how you'll get to 360? Why bother if they're haircutting you to 36.5?
Why bother, yeah.
Why do it?
So the-
There's better places in the world than Indonesia to invest money.
The 360 is on a full inclusion basis. Obviously in those two projects we mentioned, PT Vale would not take a full interest in. It would be on an equity basis, it would be less. I think the Bahodopi project, we anticipate a 49% interest. In the Pomalaa project, we anticipate about 25% interest. I think with respect to Indonesia, we have fantastic ore bodies in Indonesia and a great portfolio, and we believe that there's great value in securing that for the future. Great returns on those projects as well.
That's it. Yeah.
We believe also with the addition of Inalum to the ownership interest, we do have a key strategic government player in there that will help us, in particular with the extension of the contract of work.
Well, once again, thanks a lot for your time, for your interest, for your attention. I want to reinforce what we've been saying since minute one in this meeting. We're extremely committed with discipline, with persistence to de-risk Vale. Okay? Thanks a lot. Have a good day.