We'll try to start on time. If you can all please take a seat. Thanks everyone for being here. I'm Ivan Fadel, head of investor relations here at Vale. We're very glad to be here with you today for the 2022 Vale Day presentation, where we will go over our equity story, where we will show you some strategic initiatives that is shaping Vale of the future. The way this is going to work, we will have a slide presentation here for about 1 hour and 20 minutes, 1 hour and a half. After that, we will have a Q&A session. Of course, we'll take as many questions as we can from you here and also online.
I want to thank you and the online audience for being with us today. Let me introduce to you the executives that will participate in this presentation. We have here today Eduardo Bartolomeo, Vale's CEO. We also have our Executive Vice President for Iron Ore Solutions, Marcello Spinelli. We have Deshnee Naidoo, the Executive Vice President for Energy Transition Materials, and Gustavo Pimenta, our CFO. Okay? I'll come back later here to mediate Q&A. For now, I hope you enjoy our event, and I'd like to invite Eduardo Bartolomeo to take the stage here. Thanks everyone.
Thank you, Ivan. Well, there's water here. Good morning, everyone. Great pleasure to be with you here again. I think, last time, by the way to all of us on the virtual as well, now we have the normal, right? We have people everywhere. Last time we were here and I was trying to recap with the context, was Omicron. I think it was after Thanksgiving. I said, "Every Vale Day has an emotion." I said, "This one is Omicron." We thought the room is gonna be empty. Everybody came, by the way, that time. I think, we didn't expect to be such a hectic year. We saw Ukraine hitting us February. China decided to have its own COVID problem. The recession in the U.S.
It's been a quite, very exciting and a hectic year. What we want to do today is share with you a little bit of transition, where we are going through Vale. I want to bring you two anecdotes just to make you reflect a little bit. One is when I was Base Metals executive director, we had a projection for this year that we would have 3.8 million vehicles. This year, we're gonna produce 11 million EVs in the world. This is the first point. Of course, Ukraine brought the attention to everyone about geopolitical tensions, about energy. The word we're trying to bring to you is that we are not in an energy transition. I don't think it's an energy transition. It's an energy revolution.
We are underestimating what we have in front of us. That brings me to my second anecdote. If you get the 10 miners' market cap and you add it, you get to $570 billion. Sorry, $670 billion. If you get Tesla market cap after the tech crunch, it's $500, $600 and $570 billion. All the miners together, they don't value what Tesla values. What I'm trying to do here, and I think this is a mining issue, and Vale, of course, will show its position within this space. There's a fundamental problem of positioning itself and rerating.
With that in mind, what we want to do is to recap with you, and I promised my team that I will do it in 20 mins, I hope. You know this framework very well, people that follows Vale. This is, as I mentioned, it's my fourth Vale Day. I took over after Brumadinho. Obviously Brumadinho is a defining moment in Vale, and we did this de-risking, reshaping, rerating, capital allocation. I want to give you just a very quick overview of what we've achieved. We're going back to some of these elements later, so I won't go deeper on those. It's just a matter to understand what we were able to deliver in these last four years.
When you talk about Brumadinho, of course, I think we... It's something that we are really, how can I say that, conscious of the importance and the, and the impact that we caused, but at the same time, we are fully engaged on repairing it fairly and quickly. I think, I'm gonna go back to that. Mariana, we accelerated a lot this year. Dam safety is one of the things I'm really... I would say it's hard to choose even in English the right words for that, but we are under control. We know what we don't know. We know everything about the tails dams. I'll come back later. Capstone resumption, we are able to deliver the assets. Spinelli's gonna cover this a while. It's the most... I'm talking about specific about Minas Gerais.
I'm not talking about the Northern Range. I think we did a lot of things. Everything that we promised, we delivered. We were facing much more difficulties than we anticipate. If you look at the little balls, it's why we visual the thing. I think here we check the box. If you ask me what we did great in Vale in the last four years, we cleaned Vale, and that allowed us to come to the next chapter in a moment. We cleaned nine business in five countries. We left New Caledonia, we left Mozambique, we left steel, we left everything. We end up with iron solutions. If you got the thing. Spinelli is not my iron ore. We get energy transition materials. I think we will come back.
Cost efficiency, one thing that is very important, we need to be cycle proof. When Gustavo arrived, we started a very strong program about that. De-rerating, that's the Brumadinho issue. I think Vale was one of the first companies to leave the station on the ESG agenda because the ESG agenda knocked our door in a very awkward way. You know I will guide you through the things in my presentation. Fundamentally, we did a lot of things that people like remuneration, transparency. By the way, Okay. When I go to my new framework, I'll explain better to you. Lastly, I think we checked the box on return to shareholders. Gustavo will mention this number later. We paid last 3 years, $34 billion.
All the cash that was generated inside the company was returned to the shareholders. We bought back 13% of Vale. We're gonna finish our program about 20%. Undoubtedly, we were extremely disciplined on that sense. That brought us to this. This is what you're gonna. You know, we're very monotonous, like very focused and disciplined. That's the framework that I would like you to start following us. By the way, charging us and say, "Are you walking the talk?" I believe that we walked the talk on the previous framework. It has to do with a very specific thing that's happening in Vale. First of all, you are down the road in four years. You're learning, you're understanding better your business, you have your team.
This is, if you look at the right-hand side, I don't know, that promotes sustainable mining, is derating. I'm gonna go through all these elements here. When you see the middle, it's exactly the iron solutions and the Energy Transition Materials. Of course, we have to stay disciplined. By the way, going back to my $570 billion and $607 billion, I don't think this framework is Vale's framework. I think this should be a framework for the industry. If we're not responsible, I use this cliché a lot inside Vale. I have a 12-year-old daughter. Just, she has all the options in the world, of course, because she was well-born.
In my, in my view, why should she come to mining when she's 22? That's what miners should be thinking of. What, what kind of business are we creating to society, to people think that mining is something that's not only needed? That's what's happening today. We are needed. We are not desired. People has to acquire that. Otherwise, we are not going to get the acknowledgement and the attraction of the investors in society for our business. This promote sustainable mining is something really important to us. Again, if we are successful, my daughter... I was yesterday at one media company and said, "Look, this is the kind of work that the ambience that we have to have." We have to have innovation, autonomous. I don't want people...
We're gonna see some technology things with Deshnee, like people on the ground. We don't need people on the ground. We have to create decent jobs, skilled jobs, and a very exciting job. That's the first part of this. The last two, Spinelli and Deshnee are gonna cover, and Mr. Gustavo. Let me go through this first block because this is the new phase that Vale is gonna try to go. If we're successful, we are gonna be recognized as a sustainable miner. We're gonna foster solutions for the low carbon, for this energy revolution that I mentioned before. Of course, you cannot expect differently. We're gonna do it very disciplined. I was thinking about that because, of course, we... Let's share you something personal. I joined Vale in 2004.
If you remember when we had the 75% increase in price of iron ore, I think people in the room remember that. That was the beginning of the super cycle, right? What we did with the money in the super cycle, every investor knows we burned down $1 trillion. I think all those three elements, they really reach what is taking value out of the business in mining. Mining has to be disciplined. Of course, we are uniquely positioned not only as Vale, but as a mining industry. We are the new majors. That's another thing that I like to say. When you remember the new majors, the oil majors in the last century, we are the new majors. This we have is where all of our mining, all the mining companies should be looking at.
How we are gonna be able to supply sustainably. Otherwise, it's gonna be demand destruction. Like the EMs, the OEMs are not gonna wait for nickel. Either we do take nickel for them. The same for the high-quality iron ore. You know, there's a high, huge dependence, and Spinelli's gonna cover that later. We need to do all those three things. Of course, I'm selling my fish here. I don't know the word is, this is... Do you have this in English? Vale is uniquely positioned in that environment because we left the ESG train station much earlier than everybody else. We have the endowment, and we were lucky to have the endowment of our assets, and Spinelli and Deshnee are gonna cover. We learned a lesson. We're not gonna burn cash.
All the cash that is gonna be generated is gonna be disciplined, used. We will never forget Brumadinho. I said that since the first day here. People underestimate the impact of Brumadinho in our operations, for the good and for the bad. The fact that we are trying to do this, it begins with doing what exactly said for the first day. I think when I said that we checked the box in Brumadinho, 58% of the amounts paid, 35,000 people, indemnified, BRL 3.2 billion. You know those numbers and no extra claims. Brumadinho is a kind of a contained, but it's not about money, right? This is about empathy, about talking to people, doing what they expect to be done, but they have to be feel compensated. Mariana is a big issue, you know that.
We tripled the compensations this year. This is the new Bento. This is, it is like that. There are more than 400 houses built. They're gonna start moving on January because the school years begin. It's a huge construction site, they cannot move now. This thing is gonna be a all out of our recreation. Water is okay. The river I know very well, that river is much cleaner than before the accident. Fundamentally going to the framework of the sustainable mining. I'm gonna just go very quickly 'cause some of you already saw the presentation. It's a build up on begins with people down to nature, because that's what we do. We manage people. We are in a 180,000 people organization, 60,000 Vale employees.
If you don't treat people well and don't have the skill workforce, you don't get what we expect as a cash return or else. Culture for Vale is a very important element. I came from companies that see culture as a competitive advantage. I believe on that, and we are in this journey since 2019. I'm not gonna go through all the elements, the fact that when you measure that, we measure by the way, I'm an engineer. Engineers love measurements. We mapped more than 24,000 people and you see adherence to... Sorry, are you listening to me too? Okay. Anyhow, you see what's high in the agenda in Vale, obviously, those are the behaviors that we expect from our employees. Everybody at least believe they're obsessed with safety.
What we need to open up is more transparent dialogue and of course, ownership for the whole. This is done. I think there's a high level of adherence to that. Another element that is very important, and it's not, it's not brought and was brought, by the way, in the beginning as a lever to the culture transformation is the D&I agenda. That's a very important agenda to us. Those are big numbers in a company like Vale, we brought more than 3,800 women to our workforce. Actually anticipated the goal for 2025 was I think 2,030, if I'm not mistaken. Another very important agenda is to have women in leadership, and this is for Brazil specifically, it's extremely important.
Vale is a 66% Black company because of the areas we operate, we are Black. Black as in negro and pardos. I don't know how to say that in English. We only have 28% people in leadership. We're not talking about foremen here, talking about leadership in a higher level. It shows extremely wrong and we are moving that as well. Fundamentally, we have a zero tolerance against any kind of harassment, and the numbers shows that. Culture itself needs a framework. Everybody that knows me, VPS is Vale Production System. We were talking here before everybody that knows BHP has BOS. Everybody that knows Toyota has TPS. It doesn't matter which S it is. Vale didn't have this framework. Vale has a state-of-the-art logistics since Dr.
Ozes. We're still there because we did VPS there. What we're trying to do in Vale is to have this framework, because that's the framework about how you, how we execute our operations. That doesn't go alone for operation, it go to sales, et cetera. How is the method and how we treat people. Just of course, to mechanical here, but just to have an understand why Vale is not reliable, because that's the biggest issue here. Why Vale is not reliable. On average, we have 1.52. The system measures in each dimension, like from zero, one, two, three, four. It's like an ISO thing, if you understand what I'm trying to say. On average, Vale used to be in 2020, 1.52. Now we are 1.98.
We only going to be reliable when you get everybody to three. This is a big challenge that we have to go. We did a lot, 52% of reactions, reduction in areas below two, and I'm mature that increased a lot. Until we don't get that done, we're not going to be reliable. That's another very important piece of the strategy that we are trying to implement. We are implementing since 2019, and we are going to get there. Just to have a reference, BHP did that in 2004. Again, people, process and of course what we want to be is a safer company. We are getting there. We're not there at all. We still a huge gap. What we measure, we don't measure leading because in safety you have leading indicators.
There's the total recordable injuries, like what you measure, like trips, is everything that people... If they cut their finger or if they really lose their finger, it's the same thing. We see we have the lowest trip in the industry in Vale history. It means more or less, less 800 people is getting hurt each year at Vale. More importantly, we want to reduce fatality. This is the number you see is 66 high injury incidents in 2018. It came down to 12, our goal is to zero by 2025. It's not only about people and process, it's about technology as well.
When I remember when I started to talk about technology, we have a lot of intelligence as artificial intelligence, as you know, drowsiness, driving, et cetera, taking people out of the risk. This is a very like we call CARS, critical active risks that really are like this, very close to people get killed and they improved like a lot from 82%. If you go back to the point that really concerns everyone, is safety, right? As just to remember you, our dams in high level of alert, they are, nobody's below them, nobody's above them, so there is zero chance to any harm in the community. We built four backup dams, and we have 30% of our upstream dams eliminated.
Better to talk is, let's see a video.
At Vale, people are at the center of decision-making, and their safety is a priority. The decharacterization of upstream dams reinforces this commitment. Vale will eliminate all upstream structures in Brazil by 2035. It's a long and complex process that requires detailed studies, call for stringent safety measures, and custom-made solutions. Decharacterization consists of reintegrating the structure and its contents to the environment so that it no longer serves its purpose of tailings containment. Revegetation is the final stage, which reintegrates the structure to the local environment. In 2022, we completed the decharacterization of another five upstream structures in Minas Gerais. Overall, 12 structures have been eliminated since 2019. We are closing 2022 with 40% of our upstream structures eliminated, as we have planned in the program. We expect to conclude 60% by 2025.
Additionally, as of the beginning of this year, we have ended the emergency level of several structures. We have built downstream containment structures to retain tailings in a hypothetical case of a dam rupture. These structures are monitored 24/7 with the help of satellites and AI. We have developed emergency action plans for mining dams. If there is an emergency, systems like the Lift Line Spider allow for quick evacuation of the site. We have created the Remote Operations Center, reducing our employees' exposure to risk. The decharacterization operations at the Sul Superior dam and B3/B4 dam are being carried out with remote-controlled equipment. Unmanned trucks and excavators have presented great efficiency and led us to anticipate B3/B4 conclusion to 2025. By then, we expect Vale to have no dam under critical safety conditions.
We are on the right path to a safer and more reliable Vale, reinforcing our commitments to society and to the environment.
As you saw last week, we took B3, B4 from level 3. I'm really happy with that. I think a lot of people from investment say, "Why don't you hurry up with this thing?" There's no hurry up here. We're gonna do it very cautiously, with a lot of attention, and that's the... By the way, we anticipated B3/B4 because we are learning a lot. People say that innovation need is a mother of innovation. What's happening here is, as you saw, a lot of remote control. We are learning quite a lot from this thing, and we're very happy to have this result. By the way, we're gonna have the last two removed until 2025. We still have dams. GISTM is a very good tool.
We are compliant around 90% already. We do the self-audit now. We're gonna be compliant, as we committed to ICMM by 2023 with all of our high-risk structures. Tailings dams that I mentioned, very, very cautiously, but extremely under control. Let's move a little bit outside of our fences, right? We have 2 million people under extreme poverty around Vale's operation. It's not acceptable. Mining cannot live, cannot prosper if it doesn't share value with society. People like to say, "No, you're not government." No, I'm not government. I'm just the largest company in Brazil. If you don't take actions together with the civil society, with government, and promote this, we are not gonna be resilient.
When you said we want to build resilient communities, it's because we want to build a resilient business. We started with this approach. This is multifactorial. Poverty is very complex. We don't have time to go here about that. Fundamentally, as I mentioned in the beginning about Scope 1 and 2 and 3, we walk the talk. We're gonna start this year a pilot program in four areas with 3,000 people that is gonna attack education, health, income generation, infrastructure. Again, it's not Vale. It's Vale together with society. For the ones that know the Sustainable Development Goals, it's the SDG 17, it's a very important thing. By the way, UN say, "Leave no one behind," and we cannot leave our neighbors behind. That's very important.
It's key to our, to our business. Vale is taking that very seriously. Second thing, the second part is about being in relationship with relevant issues to society. The indigenous people in Brazil are extremely relevant to us. This is the first time the CEO went to a Xikrin village. In Carajás, we have a relationship with them by 40 years. Carajás is a 4-year-old corporation. I luckily, I was very honored to be invited to go there, because we finalized a 15-year settlement with them. It's a very interesting thing. They went to visit us in Carajás. It was a very special moment. Anyhow, this is the part of the society. Let's go to the climate. This is, you know...
When I said we hit the train sooner, we were the first ones to aggressively change our targets to Scope 1 and 2. We're the first ones to release the Scope 3 emissions target. We're the first one to open up our curve, our marginal abatement curve for Scope 3. We're the first one to tell we were spending $6 billion to cover Scope 1 and 2. We again walk the talk. By the way, we have some endowments as well, because in Indonesia we have 100% hydropower. Brazil is a very clean matrix, we are gonna be able to be in 25 totally Scope 2 zeroed. We are... That's the I like to create some new buzzes. We are a nature-based company.
We don't choose where we go. If we choose, we can go to Paris, but we can't. We have to go to Carajás, we have to go to Indonesia, go to Sudbury. We don't choose oneness, so we are nature-based and we are nature positive. A lot of people talk on being nature positive. Yesterday I got a question about biodiversity. You know, there's as we speak, biodiversity is coming online. The person asked, "Oh, you're gonna impact biodiversity." We know more about the fauna of Carajás than U.K. knows about its own genome. We've mapped around 1,500 genomes in Carajás, and we protect 600 endangered flora and fauna species in Carajás. This is 12 times larger than what we, okay, we impact. This 1.19 million.
You always said, one... They made my life harder because of the language. That's 1 million hectares. 1,191,000 hectares. This is really. Thank you, guys. This is 200 x the size of Manhattan or 6 x the size of London. We can, and we do mine positively with sustainability. I want to pass a video about the climate change. This is my last video, I close up and give the word to Spinelli.
Vale is carrying out initiatives to the environmental and social fields to foster sustainable development. Our goals are aligned with the UN 2030 agenda and aim to reduce impact and to create and share value. We stay focused on society's needs. Among them, the challenges brought on by climate change. We're committed to cutting by 33% our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, and becoming net zero by 2050. In 2022, the Power Shift program, which aims at transforming our energy matrix, received its second electric locomotive. Its lithium batteries provide enough power for up to 10 hours without recharging. We're also testing electric off-road trucks. They'll allow us emissions by about 8 tons of carbon monoxide equivalent on, which is similar to planting 560 trees to neutralize emissions. The electric trucks will also reduce noise impact in the neighboring communities.
An important delivery for our clean energy consumption goal was the Sol do Sertão project. Considered one of the largest solar farms in Latin America. The solar farm provides enough power for 800,000 homes, and it will supply 16% of Vale's demand in 2025. We have invested around BRL 3 billion in the project. The solar farm is already operational, and it will be fully energized by July 2023. During the construction phase, about 50% of the staff was sourced locally, and 16% of them women. That way, we foster ties with the community in a sustainable cycle, which helps promote local development. Driven by our social ambition, we want to develop self-sustaining communities while promoting a sustainable mining. Let's transform the future together.
This is the roadmap that I mentioned before, we want to be very transparent again. As I mentioned, we need to be radically transparent. There's a lot of questioning around people setting goals and not being able to deliver values in the path. I'm not gonna bother you about this slide, but this slide is very clear, we've sort of said how we closed 7% of the 33% when we do the biomass and pelletizing and so on. To conclude, we are uniquely positioned to the second part of our frame. If we are able to responsibly mine, and irrespect of what I'm talking about, Vale was given an endowment. We have the best reserves of the world in iron ore, in Carajás and in the south of Brazil.
Spinelli is gonna as well explore that. We have a lot of technology. We are a logistics powerhouse and innovation company in iron ore that nobody is. Because a lot of people see Scope 3 as a threat. Vale sees Scope 3 as a huge opportunity. The same goes to base metals. When we arrived and they acquired nickel in 2006, and of course, we haven't done the right job since then. On the other hand, we acquired the best sulfide assets that there are in Sudbury Basin. We have the Carajás of nickel in Indonesia. I was there last week. We have Brazil, and the intersection point is Carajás.
Carajás has the best nickel and the best copper reserves that we can explore, and that's gonna make us, our business uniquely positioned to catch the opportunities that the energy revolution is bringing to us. Now I think I run over some minutes, and Spinelli is gonna save some minutes to us. Now come, please welcome Spinelli, our iron solutions guy.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Morning, everyone. Today in my presentation, I'll drive you in a journey starting from the market, and we have a segmentation of the market that will be really important to understand what is the impact of the decarbonization of the steel market and what is happening in the iron ore industry. Going across our product portfolio in service to supply the client needs, and finally deploying in our production plan to support this strategy. We are facing a unique transformation in the steel market. As a revolution. We are the only iron solutions in the market today that can supply these needs. Start with the market. This is the same speech probably you're gonna hear in any presentation from any in a presentation like this.
We have the Australians, they'll talk that. They'll talk about... We believe the same. Steel demand is not over. Steel demand is not over. We just reached 8 billion people in the world, and we expect to have another 2 billion coming to life in the next 30 years. Now not only China is playing this role, India is playing this role, Southeast Asia and Africa. We must have steel to support all the development. It's not about only number of people, but also wealth. China just announced a goal to duplicate the GDP per capita. That implies in a 4.61% of growth in average until 2035. Urbanization not over. We have... Sorry. We have China reaching 63% of the urbanization.
They have a potentiality to reach 80%. That's the standard of the developed country. Global wide, we have 57%. Many actions are coming in in many countries like IRA, the U.S., the onshoring, are blooming also the steel. Energy transition. It's not only about Deshnee in base metals. She'll talk about that. There'll be a lot of information about that. Everything relies on infrastructure to support that. We need steel to support the energy transition. Another information here that steel intensity is also growing. In China some years ago, they used to use 0.8% in the construction for housing. Now they are reaching 6%. That's because we need to reduce cement also. That's one of the main emissions of CO2 in the world.
This is the bigger picture about a standard company, 62 company, but we are not a 62 company in iron ore. Let's talk about something that is closer to us. That's the same number here of steel demand. Now let's split this in some source of metallics. The kind, the way they want to produce this steel. We have a common sense. We've been talking about that, and we talked about this last year, about the pathway of decarbonization of the steel industry. We start with the optimization of blast furnace. More than 70% of the steel production is based in blast furnace. They will migrate to direct reduction routes, starting using as energy natural gas in the first moment, and later the hydrogen. That's the common sense about the pathway.
You see the increase also of the scrap. That's the trend. That's the mega trend. When you need the scrap to the scrap, you need to clean the scrap. Also there's another pressure to bring metallics to the table. We have two main source to improve the production of direct reduction routes, decarbonization pathway and clean the scrap. Okay, this is more about Vale. Let's translate this to iron ore demand. My left-hand side here, we have a graph, and probably you see this graph, probably you write about that the declining business. Iron ore is a declining. Every time my boss said, Oh, you're a declining business, now you need to bring something sexy to the table. That's the common graph that you see, a declining business. Okay.
Not that way, because everybody is struggling to bring new volumes in the world. Everybody is struggling due to ESG standards, KVs in part of Australia, we have other problems in Brazil. Everybody is struggling. What we have here, the quality is decreasing and the necessity to high quality ores is increasing. Let's see what is in the middle. A growing market. We need to optimize the blast furnace. We need to bring agglomerated products to optimize the blast furnace. I'm talking about agglomeration, and we are talking about pellets and green briquettes. There is a growth here, 2%. Now the main number. The main number. We have growth in our ore business. 30% a year of growth for direct reduction pellets or agglomerated products. There's one information here.
There's a gap of 70 million tons, 70 million tons of products to supply the market. Nobody's bringing that. We are only company that can bring that can solve this problem. I'm talking about announced projects that we've been discussing with our clients. They need to decarbonize, they need to migrate to that route, but they don't have the products. How can you solve that? With that, there's a decoupling in the market. I've been talking about this in our conference calls, now we need to drag your attention to that. Again, I'm gonna bring Deshnee to the table because every time and I learn with her, she's talking about the Nickel Class 1 and Nickel Class 2.
I said, "We have the same." Iron ore Class 1 and iron ore Class 2. My peers, they don't. Probably they don't like to see that they are in the Class 2, because we are in the Class 1 market. You see agglomerated products and high-grade ores, IOCJ, BRBF, we are a gradual increase of premiums here. If you see the gap, the widened gap when you compare to the low-grade ores, that's the trend, and that's what is going to happen. Please, if you are modeling our business, don't forget that we are not a standard 62 business. We need to take this into consideration. What is Iron Ore Solutions company? It's a company that is committed to supply the market, the two mainstream lines, two lines of products.
Products that will bring optimization to the blast furnace, will reduce the use of coke, reduce the use of energy. We are developing and designing products for that. We are good in that. On the other hand, the second line of products will be products that will support the direct reduction route that we have a lack of demand. That's Iron Solutions company. Let's watch a video now that we can see, and we've been developing this for some time, even after Brumadinho, because we've been talking about every time about volumes, and all the 400 million tons, and we didn't talk about that so much. That's a silent revolution. A lot of technology here. A lot of innovation here, and we are really addressing the real value in the market with this technology. Let's watch it.
Vale is fostering real and pioneering solutions to decarbonize the steelmaking industry, which accounts for more than 8% of global emissions. We offer high-grade ores and promote the development of the new products and technologies to support our clients' emissions reduction. In 2021, we announced the green iron ore briquette. It is a sustainable solution which allows over 10% emission reduction in blast furnace route. By eliminating the sintering process, the product also has application in the direct reduction route to produce HBI. The briquette production is more flexible with fewer production stages using the cold agglomeration process, reducing CO2 and particulate emissions. The first two plants are under construction in the Tubarão port with 6 million tons per year capacity and start up in 2023. In November 2022, we announced another pioneering initiative.
We have signed agreements to develop industrial complexes in the Middle East, the Mega Hubs, for steelmaking through the direct reduction route. The Mega Hubs flow sheet includes concentration and briquetting plants under Vale's operation, as well as HBI and premium steel production plants owned and operated by investors and clients. The Middle East has many advantages, such as area availability, competitive energy prices, and ports to berth large vessels. With the Mega Hubs, Vale will guarantee the supply of agglomerated products, meeting the growing demand. Throughout the years, Vale has been developing iron solutions for our clients. Decarbonizing the industry is our commitment to society and to the planet. We exist to improve life and transform the future together.
Okay. Our platform to support that necessity, that demand of agglomerated products, we call our agglomerated products pellets. Pellets, we have a capacity of 50-55 million tons of pelletizing plant. All the growth will come with the agglomeration that we call green briquette. Half of the OpEx, one-third of the CapEx, we are bringing online the two plants next year. We are producing large scale now. We're not talking about the design of the future. We now deliver. We are delivering that. Pay attention to my left-hand side. What we do here? We are bringing by the end of the decade, almost one-third of our sales will be based on agglomerated products. Going after value here, going after premiums here to support segment that is growing that need to be decarbonized. That's what we're doing.
Mega Hubs. You saw in the video, but just emphasize two things here. What is a Mega Hub? It's a module of 2.5 million tons of HBI plant. HBI or direct reduction full plant. That implies in a 4 million ton of agglomerated or green briquette. We are already designing and committed to design in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, in Oman, and other plants are in the same region that we already have a plant. There is another facility. We started to talk about the design in Brazil and the U.S. We have both countries source of energy, competitive energy. The main message here is we believe that you see an offshoring of energy and production of reduction of steel.
Everybody think about energy, green energy being supported by ammonia, being transported by hydrogen, and we think that can be the green energy, can be transported inside metallic closer to the industry that goes to the source of energy. That's the trend we see serving all. Well, now how we're going to solve the biggest problem in doing that? The lack of pellet feed. There's no pellet feed for that. We don't have today. We are struggling to reach 40 million tons because we rely on, you know, old process. What is the good news here? This is one thing that we're really proud. We are really good on that. We are really good in concentrate ores. You know, every ore, iron ore in the world can be concentrated. You know that.
Australians, they cannot concentrate their ores. They cannot reach a 67, 68 with hematite. That's what we do, and we know how to do it very well. What are the solutions for that? We deliver the filtrations. It's not enough. It's not enough. We can't just recover our capacity with the filtrations. We can extract the water. We don't use dams. We rely on stockpile for that. We also bring another technology, dry concentration. We are bringing the technology in 2023, 2024. That will be part of the design. It's not enough. We started to have a kind of hedge, I can say the better word for that, to guarantee that we can supply because our clients are changing. They are moving to direct reduction. They need supply. Have a fallback position here. We can concentrate ores.
Now in China, we've been doing this for more than one year, we are designing the hubs to concentrate ore also, if you have any constraint in Brazil. Finally, that's a breakthrough here. Nobody knows that. You'll be the only one. Even our clients, they don't know that we have a solution to guarantee that. We cracked the code to concentrate Carajás. That's the biggest pool. We have 200 million tons here. If you have a necessity of 70 million tons, we can concentrate from 65% iron content to 67%, 68%. We already have the process to do that. We're gonna do this. We need to be ready by 2027, 2028 to support that growth that you saw there. Okay. Everything we are talking about circular mining.
You remember last year we talked about the Vale Sand, so everything is connected. We are doing the best and to sell this sand as a co-product to support the concentration process in a sustainable way. Okay. We came from market. We need to talk about rum. We need volumes. Okay. Before that, we're shifting gear here. It's important to say. We're shifting gears here. We are producing high-quality ores to support that market that we are talking about. Remember what you saw here. We have technology. We have innovation for concentration. We are delivering the filtration. We are already delivering the briquette system. We are designing the supply chain for that. We are closer to our clients. When you're doing this, we are designing with our client.
You're not going to an open market. We are diversifying the geography here, guys. Don't forget it. We're going to Mina. We're going to supply Europe. That is suffering first before, at least before China. We are diversifying also this, reducing risk. We have to solve a problem of the production. Let's start with the lessons learned. We have to say one thing. We underestimate the impact of Brumadinho in our production plan. Definitely, we underestimate. We lost, do you remember that, 25% of our capacity just after Brumadinho, and we brought back a lot of, actually, all the operations, not in a full capacity, but we brought back. Safety was an issue. Safety of dam was an issue in the beginning, you remember that. The saga to bring the vibration test.
We are worried about, you know, dismantling another dam with the operation. We did this. We have a huge transformation, guys, in the framework of a regulation in Brazil for mining and environment. We have a huge regulation. As an example, you know about Porto dam, that we are already done. It's done. We didn't get yet the permit because we need seven guys to prove that. They are struggling to organize themselves. Just permit. Okay, this is part of the game. We are now correcting our production plan to consider that. In S11D, we have the legacy of the OBK, the ore body. You know that. We found a famous jaspilite, very hard rock.
As we have the mine site and the crushers is in the downhill, we cannot transport that. We need to crush in the mine site. We don't have the capacity. We use tunnel alignment, okay, but it's not possible to solve the full problem. We now addressed that with the final crusher until 26. We're going to bring 120 million tons for S11. This level is there. We don't have a problem with license. It's just a matter of construction. In the North Range, the depletion, the pace of depletion is higher than the speed and the pace to bring new or new bodies, new license. We are losing the game here. That's the point. Okay. How can you address this? How can you solve this? Two things.
In one hand, strengthen relationship with the agencies, environment agencies. Okay, it is an institutional front? Yes. Now we can say that mining can be in the, you know, as a priority in Brazil, we can discuss this. We suffered a lot because after Brumadinho, it wasn't. We can do that. More than that, I'm talking about technical aspects of environmental issues here. Two numbers just to figure out. We just committed $40 million with ICMBio. ICMBio is a federal agency in Brazil to bring them. The technologies that Eduardo just said about genomic and and DNA of bioanalysis, like flower, cottage s, we brought hands, arms to work, studies. We cannot skip a process of license. We're the only one skip.
We're gonna guarantee that we have the right license process. We need to bring them. We've got a good thing here. We got M3. We got M3, the first license. After that, just after that, because we could brought a lot of information and they are really feeling well that, okay, you can release this first license for that. Don't forget the ITV, Institute Vale of Technology, is being invested $140 million in many initiative in technology to do that. It is still a problem here, be forever. We have an ESG trend. We have to work a lot and keep the priority of our government in this area. On the other hand, okay, we have to bring the projects. I wanna drag your attention here.
You may ask me, why Spinelli, now you believe that you're going to deliver and it's not going to fail again? Okay, I can show you. There's a lot of information. Sorry about that. We discuss about it, but I have to drive you through that. Just in the legend, you see main license achieved and under license process. In the Northern System, Gelado is being commissioned. No license problem at all. It's only, it depends on us. M3, it's a good example. We don't have yet the full license, but we got it. We got the first one. That's a good achievement, and we need to work hard to do that. In one and two, our borders, we are behind. We need to bring that for you. It's tough. We are behind. There are other things.
In S11D, we have plus 10, plus 20 under construction. No issues for with the license. We are going to bring this volume. We don't have any restriction for that, and the pressure is off. In Southeast system, Torto. I put Torto here with the license achieved, but we don't have the final one. We'll have the... You know, the main one is the installation license, when you have to start the construction. We already start, it's done. The dam is ready, but you have the final one that you didn't get yet. You're gonna get. You're gonna get in some month. There is a delay, but you're gonna get. We have another example, like Itabiruçu that we just delivered.
We remember that we promised this last year, the raising of Itabiruçu dam, and Torto will improve the quality. Not volume, but improve the quality. Remember that the game is a quality game, we're improving the production of pellet feed, and that will be really important for that. Now I bring the numbers that you're really good. You really like the numbers, the guidances of production. First number here. For this year, our guidance is the lower range of our guidance, 310. For next year, our production guidance is a range between 310 and 320. With all the restrictions that I mentioned, I can say coincidentally, we have to say we have a problem, and we are addressing that. Coincidentally, that's the balance of the market. You see the market is balance in supply.
With the kind of product we have, that's the right balance for the market. In the next years, we expect to bring 10 million tons a year on average, ±5, and reach the 340, 360. Drag your attention here, we're increasing the quality. That's the game. You may ask me, where is the 400? Where is the 400? We have the capacity for 400 million tons in logistics. The sweet spot that we see for this business is this number today. We can go after 400 if you need, but we don't see this now. Restrictions, we have the pathway to get there, and we are doing that. At the same time, again, it's a...
The most important part of my presentation, we definitely started to supply the market for the new world, the decarbonization world. We are more worried about upgrading our products, bringing concentration, bringing pelletizing, bringing green briquette, and increasing our value. We bring more value with this rather than the 400 million tons, with this, with this pattern of portfolio. If you compare the 400 now, you have this new number with 2026 with more value. We're increasing the agglomerated pellets and green briquettes, and we're gonna reach the, the one-third that I mentioned. We're increasing the high-grade ores, IOCJ, BRBF. We are decreasing the low-grade ores. Take a look at these numbers. There is in this part that we have an average. That's all in premium. That is increasing. There's a consequence of that premium that I showed you.
It's much better than bring volume. This is not a value over volume. It's a much more value over volume than the previous plan. When you design us, when you model us, consider that we are not a 62 standard company. We are shifting to this iron solutions business. You're not avoiding the problem that we have and that we had. We are addressing. We are more confident that we have a realistic plan to deliver, but we are shifting to iron solutions company. To conclude, Eduardo, we have growth. We have growth in iron ore. Guys, we have growth. Take a look in segmentation. Don't think about as a whole business because we are. You were educated by the Australians. We are Brazilians. Now you can see we have growth for iron ore.
You see a segmented, clearly increasing volumes. We have breakthrough initiatives. We are leading that for concentration, for agglomeration. We are doing silently. We've been doing this since Brumadinho. We are showing that we have a real plan for that, not an MOU. We have a plan, definitely a plan with more realistic, considering all the challenges we have, we have the sweet spot that we have that I believe there's more balance in this plan now. Finally, we are the only iron solutions company that are really, really committed to the Scope 3 to solve the problems of our clients. Nobody in the industry is still there. They are worried about the Scope 1 and Scope 2, they are not really about how can they solve the problem of the decarbonization in the steel industry. I'll be here for further questions.
Now I'll hand over to Deshnee. Thank you.
Thank you.
You're the boo.
Hi. All right. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here in what is my debut Vale Day, and fantastic to be talking about our energy transition materials business today. Spi did an amazing job, but maybe too good a job, so I'm gonna try and pick up the pace and try and streamline the presentation a little bit. Let me start by summarizing the generational opportunity that we have in front of us in terms of the nickel and copper markets. We all know that this is nickel and copper's time on the back of low-carbon energy transition. Let me summarize quickly the driving forces behind what's leading to this exciting opportunity in the market today. Firstly, it's all about EV growth.
The numbers that we are projecting for both nickel and copper is in the back of that EV sales growth that we are seeing by 2030. If we look at the tightness in the market that this demand growth is creating, specifically in Class 1 nickel today, we are forecasting to see a tightness in the market in the medium term, but actually leading to an deficit in the market as we continue to see demand outstripping supply. A very important trend that we continue to see, and I call it a positive push by the OEMs for more ESG, more low carbon, that is basically translating that basic fundamentals that we're seeing in the market into an upside on price differentiation.
The last major trend that we are seeing is actually driven by the support that we're seeing from governments in terms of critical minerals, policies, and more recently, some of the stimulus packages. All of this translates into a bright future for nickel and copper. We are uniquely placed to deliver into the demand growth given where we operate today. In nickel, predominantly in our North Atlantic hub, we have significant mining and processing all the way to refined products footprint that actually creates an opportunity for us given the substantial global flow sheet that we have that actually links the Indonesian operations as well. In copper, predominantly in South Atlantic out of Carajás, we have significant mining and processing assets all the way to concentrate that actually delivers a significant opportunity there.
In every geography that we operate in, we occupy the top 3 positions in terms of reserve and resources today. For all the OEMs listening, the tons are in the ground. It is a matter of how we exploit it and how fast we can exploit it. Given our geographical location in North America, we are uniquely positioned to take up the demand that we are seeing from gigafactory growth just down the road from us. It's not just the what we do and the incredible assets that we have both in the ground and on the ground. It is the how. That is why today, across our nickel laterites, nickel sulfides, as well as our copper businesses, we occupy the Class 1 position in low carbon intensity Scope 1 and 2 across the board.
In fact, we've just verified 9 of our products independently verified that substantiate that. As Eduardo said, for base metals, more than 90% of our electricity comes from renewable sources. 100% of that, as Eduardo indicated, in Indonesia is all from hydropower. It's all about building and creating sustainable community relations, which is why that historic agreement with the Xikrin was so important for us in terms of the some of the capital decisions that we will go on to make, as well as the IBAs that we have in Canada. Let me tell you about how we are pivoting our business towards this exciting EV sector for Vale. At the start of the year, we told you that we want to have at least 35%-40% exposure to EVs.
At the start of the year, we were at 5% in terms of offtakes that we had with Northvolt and Tesla. We have been guiding on this exciting nickel sulfate project that we are building in Canada, in Quebec. This project will take 25,000 tons of our low-carbon nickel, pelleted and ground, and will produce battery-grade nickel sulfate. That 25,000 tons will result in 110,000 tons of nickel sulfate. We recently announced that that offtake will go to GM. In that one transaction, we've taken our exposure to EV for value up to 25%. Just to put the numbers into context, that 110,000 tons of liquid nickel sulfate is enough to power more than 300 nickel-rich EVs annually. That's a game changer.
The other business segment that we are working on is actually our circular mining business. What we are doing there is looking at how can we reintroduce some of the black mass, and we've tested about 25 different black masses over the last almost four years now. How can we reintegrate that back into our flow sheet? We are best placed now with the relationships that we are creating with the OEMs to give them nickel and in return, get some of the spent batteries over a period. Not only are we mapping some of the legacy streams that we've had, we have this year actually put this into serious action, where we started to retreat some of the legacy waste streams that we have.
One of the examples there is almost 7,000 tons of copper and nickel that we've retreated and sold from our copper ponds at Thompson. It's all about building stable operational platforms. We know that we've not achieved the results that we've been guiding over the years. What we are focused on, almost fixated on right now, is improving the safe reliability of the operations. Nothing says it better than showing it. I wanna show you very quickly some of the work that we've been busy with in the last year. Let's move to the IROC video.
At Vale, we continue to invest in innovation that will transform our business in order to deliver materials essential to the energy transition. One of our boldest recent investments is the Integrated Remote Operation Center, the IROC. The IROC is a next-generation facility located in our North Atlantic operations headquarter in Sudbury. It was developed to improve safety and our productivity in our mines in Canada. It is like an air traffic control tower for our mining operations. Linked through underground digital connectivity technology, IROC experts oversee our operations online in real time through multi-screen computer station operating 24/7. This means we can have a better management of the activities, optimizing our operational efficiency, and improving our planning. IROC is an innovation which combines productivity and safety, enabling a more precise location of our personnel and equipment and data risk assessment, reducing emergency response time.
The mines will be equipped with geofencing technology, a virtual barrier in underground areas where traffic is not allowed in order to avoid risk exposure. In its first stage, IROC will connect Creighton, Coleman, and Totten mines in Sudbury with plans to include our other mines and processing plants across Canada. In 2022, we registered an increase in productivity in our Creighton and Coleman mines. Our goal is to reach productivity growth between 15% and 30% throughout the Sudbury Basin. The IROC implementation means a paradigm shift for the mining sector, creating a safer work environment with more technical knowledge, ushering in a new era in technological progress. We are improving our performance to become the partner of choice to the energy transition and transform the world together.
IROC, which stands for Integrated Remote Operation Center, is all about integrating what happens below the earth and on surface to make sure that we can optimize our cycle times. This year alone, we managed to increase the productivity in terms of the amount of tons that we've hoisted out of Creighton and Coleman by more than 10% from the start of the year. Additionally, we've increased our scoop seat times by 21% year to date at Creighton to allow the optimization of that of the tons that we've hoisted.
We've enabled this by the LTE networks that we have underground and when Eduardo spoke about safety transformation, this is safety transformation in action because we are using technology to make sure that we can better manage traffic underground. The many initiatives and programs that we have in North Atlantic is starting to deliver the results. I've just mentioned the IROC as one example, but IROC sits as part of the overall North Atlantic Mines Productivity Initiative, something that we started late last year when we started to focus on the bottlenecks per mine to make sure that we can increase the cycle times. I've mentioned some of the metrics now. The others include increasing our backfill rates, increasing our production, drilling, as well as looking at improving our development rates.
We have seen notable improvements across the five mines in Sudbury, but also the rest of North Atlantic. We've also this year implemented the CCM1 project, which is the south refurbishment project, and that project is currently ramping up. We're also ramping up VBME. This year was the year of truing up a lot of the backlog maintenance that we've had on the back of COVID in North Atlantic. I'm very happy to say that the bulk of that work is now behind us, and that extended maintenance, that shuts that we took this year, is resulting in reliability that is now enabling some of the best daily ore production rates that we've seen across Sudbury. In fact, the rates today between 12,000-13,000 tons is the most that we've seen in the last three years.
All of this ramps up now to over 17,000 tons per day across North Atlantic, which ideally sets us up for what we need to deliver next year. Still work to do, the results are coming. If I turn my attention to South Atlantic, and this is where we've not been able to erode some of that backlog maintenance from COVID as we would have wanted, and we know why. Carajás is incredibly remote, and through COVID we've had quite a high turnover of people. What we are finding, instead of going back and fixing the backlog, we are now having to fix a lot more of the asset integrity issues that are affecting our runtimes and hence availability.
Instead of an ad hoc approach to try and get the assets to perform, we are taking action to take a step back and make sure that we can erode this backlog whilst we operate over the right period of time. An example of that is what we saw at Sossego earlier this year, where we had planned for a 45-day shut to actually replace the gearless mill drive on the mill. When we went in, we saw we had far more deterioration on the discharge trunnion. We had to extend the shut in order to replace the discharge trunnion as well. What I'm encouraged about in South Atlantic Copper is the mine movement that we've been able to not just sustain but improve this year.
This is important for Salobo because now we are moving around 127 million tons of both ore and waste rock. This does not only de-risk the current Salobo operations, but will de-risk the ramp up of Salobo 3. We have started something called the Asset Recovery Program across the current Salobo operations that will see us catch up the majority of that backlog maintenance throughout the course of next year. There's only one way to do things. Do it right, take the time. In copper, we will be growing copper next year. Two key drivers. That is the Salobo 3 ramp up, as well as the progressive improvements that we will see in the current Salobo operations as we erode that backlog of maintenance. In nickel, we will continue to consolidate the productivity improvements that we have made this year.
We will continue to ramp up VBME. As we indicated earlier this year, VBME is one year delay. That delay hits us next year at a time when we are still ramping up VBME, but also having to deplete the O Vão pit, which is why we see almost a delta 10,000-11,000 ton difference on VBME. We do have some major overhauls, as in the case of Creighton, as well as the Onça Puma fan is now coming up to 10 years of life of asset to actually replace next year. When we take all of that into account, remove the one-offs, nickel is actually stable year-on-year.
We are doing the right things in terms of making sure that the asset integrity is what it needs to be, and that is why we are guiding between 160,000-175,000 tons next year. We have had a busy year. Not just in terms of the current assets and the work that we have been doing to make sure we get to a more safer, reliable, solid foundation for the business, but we have worked hard to progress the pipeline of projects that we've had. Starting with exploration. Over the last three years, we've increased the amount of meters drilled across base metals alone by over 60%.
Year on year, we're starting to see the results that comes from increased exploration. As Eduardo said, we mine in some of the most attractive nickel sulfide deposits in the world, the Sudbury Basin, the Thompson Basin, and Voisey's Bay. Year on year, we've managed to increase our reserves in nickel sulfide to over 35% and our resources by 10%. Similarly, in copper, with the amount of drilling that we've increased, both in Carajás as well as in Indonesia, we have been able to increase our resources year on year by 25%. If you put it all together, the increase in drilling, the acceleration of the study work to start taking decisions to move projects closer to approvals. This year saw projects like Creighton Five, CCM Put moving into feasibility study.
It also saw us approving the Bahodopi Project, the Pamona early works, as well as Onça Puma Furnace 2. We have concluded the project of CCM1. We have started Salobo 3. Turning to Salobo 3. Salobo 3 has started, as we said last year this time at the end of November, beginning of December. This project has been delivered on time and on budget at $1.1 billion. I have been in the mining industry for almost 25 years now. I've had the pleasure of either building projects or watching projects build. I am particularly fond of concentrator plants because I'm a chemical engineer.
This project has some of the best engineering designs I have seen. If you look at the geography that this project is in, it is quite a fate to be building a project of this size in the middle of the Carajás forest, the team has done it. It's not just the what we've done on Salobo 3 that has been exciting, it is the how. We have, for the last 2 years, been piloting a new Vale operations readiness program at Salobo that basically saw us now having recruited more than 90% of the people that we've needed in the jobs already there. In addition to that, we are learning. We have used all the pain points that we have in the Salobo 1 and 2 plant to make sure that we can alleviate that in Salobo 3.
In addition to that, we have built quite a few optimizations, like reducing the amount of conveyors, increasing the amount of stockpile capacity ahead of the mill to make sure that we can introduce buffers. I am most excited about 2 things. The fact that this complex, the one mine and now the three plants, will reduce our overall unit cost for over 15%, in addition, we will start Salobo 3 with more than 40% women. That is the highest number of women across any site in Vale. Let's turn very quickly to the projects that we have that we have approved this year, and I am noting the time. I was not as successful as I was hoping to try and claw back that time, Spi. Very quickly, on Onça Puma, 12,000-15,000 tons of ferro-nickel.
It will bring down the entire complex cost by 15%, $555 million of capital. We have already started the mobilization of Onça Puma after having approved it in September this year, and that is because all of the licenses for Onça Puma are already in place. We have approved both Bahodopi and Pamona early works, and I'll combine some of this very quickly. Bahodopi is a 73,000 ton ferro-nickel plant. We will be responsible for 100% of the mining that will cost $400 million, and we have entered into a JV with our Chinese partners, and that's Tisco, a division of Baowu Steel, as well as Xinhai to build the RPF plant that we will then have a 49% offtake on. Pamona is a game changer. Pamona is in the Southeast Sulawesi province in Indonesia.
That will be the single largest HPAL plant globally today once built. We are partnering with Huayou, who now has an established track record in Indonesia to do this. Eduardo was in Indonesia last week and he had the pleasure of going to the Bahodopi, the Pamona groundbreaking ceremony. Both of these projects have something in Indonesia called the PSN, which are basically the strategic projects of national importance in Indonesia, which means that all of the licenses, permits that they need will be granted. Too many numbers, all you should take from the nickel replacement projects is that we have projects in the pipeline to replace about 44,000-45,000 tons of nickel and copper between 2027 and 2029. On copper, we've changed our approach in Carajás on the South Hub.
We are now looking at the synergies that we can bring in terms of getting the approvals of Bacaba and Cristalino in quick succession from next year onwards, because these projects are very important for the replacement of Sossego that will last us up until 2026, 2027. This is where the focus is. There are other opportunities. I'm not gonna go through all of the details, but that's what makes the pipeline exciting. In here, like Huhu, for an example. Huhu today is the single largest copper project being worked on in the world, and we have that within our portfolio. It is more than 1 billion tons of reserve resources, and it could give us a mine as much as 350,000 tons of copper. Huhu is more also of a gold and a silver deposit as well.
It has an extremely large amount of gold. That project is in early stages, again, another game changer. Just keeping with the waste to value, we're really looking at how we can take our previously discarded limonite from the Sorowako operations in Piti Valley, looking at how we can then convert that into value by working with Huayou on a heads of agreement on a potential 60,000 ton HPAL plant there. Thompson remains a little bit of blue sky, what an amazing opportunity. That exciting R&R that I mentioned does not include the 5 million tons of contained nickel we have in Thompson. Although South Hub in Brazil is all about replacement, North Hub, bit more, you know, blue sky, 70,000-100,000 tons is pure growth for us in Carajás.
To save time, I'm gonna do what my boss didn't ask me to do and put both slides together. When we combine all of the numbers and all of the projects that I've just mentioned, in copper, we can get to about 420,000 tons in the midterm and almost 900,000 tons in 2030 or longer term because of the projects that we will execute. In nickel, and I wanna make a distinction very quickly, we take the current production levels, and this is very much a year that we will continue to ramp up our projects, to 245,000 tons in 2026 and above 300,000 tons in the long term. This makes a very important assumption that PTVI will be at 36%, so this is the equity contribution.
If you add back the 100% of PTVI, that 245 in the middle can be as much as 290,000 tons, and the greater than 300,000 tons, almost 400,000 tons. PTVI, although it has that exciting growth, it will enable a lot more because I am equity adding PTVI in 100%. PTVI's growth means that in the next 5 years, it can grow from the current 80,000 tons to above 330,000 tons alone. All that's left to say, this is the right time for nickel and copper. We have a differentiated business in terms of the resources we have in the ground. Our mineral endowment is unparalleled. We have the assets in the right geographies, incredibly low carbon in order for us to unlock that value.
If you look at the actions that we are taking, we are taking targeted actions to make sure that we can bring back the stability of the current operations to create a far more stable platform in order to grow from. We have an unparalleled project pipeline that we are turbocharging in order to get these projects delivered to a very, a very expectant market right now. Thank you. I'm now gonna hand to Gustavo.
Thank you. All right, thanks, Deshnee. Good morning, everyone. You've heard a lot, so I'll try to be very quick, and we have time for the Q&A. There is one couple important slides that I wanna spend a little time on because I know it's top of mind for everyone. The first one is on base metals, right? We've been debating and discussing with you the different strategic alternatives that we have, Sean locked base metals. Today, we wanna share what is the strategic path that we have discussed with our board and the one that we are moving forward. The first thing that it's important to highlight, Deshnee spent a lot of time on how unique these assets are, right? We are sitting in tremendous amount of resources.
There's a lot of fundamental support for the business in terms of EV, electrification growth. The business has a lot of good value proposition. We are convinced that we have to change the way we manage this business, right? Over the last several years, we've been managing base metals through a combination of function model, functional model with some local support. The way to understand this is a lot of the functions today sit in Rio supporting base metals. We think this is not the right way to take this business to the next level. We'll change that. The way we are gonna manage base metals going forward is through a board. Base metals will have all the capabilities sitting in there with the CEO of base metals.
They'll have the project capability, procurement, sourcing, all the key activities that today don't sit in base metals will start to sit there, right? That's an important change in a way to ring-fence the business from Vale. The reason for that is that this business has a very different fundamental and dynamic as compared to iron ore. This is a growth business, substantially more complex than iron ore from a processes standpoint, so I think that change is needed. Once we do that, we'll manage this business through a board. That board will have the CEO of Vale, Eduardo, in this case, sitting there as a representative and a few other members of the executive committee.
We'll take this change and the benefit of this change to independent board members. So we are already in the process of talking to very high profile board members that can join the story. People with deep underground mining experience, people with deep EV transition experience. People that will help the management team to think through what is next and how to take this business to the next level. Once we ring fence, we are convinced that we will also be able to bring technical talent to the team, to the base metals team. That's another positive element of this transition. This is moving forward. We've been talking to people. We're very excited with everything we are hearing. Stay tuned, we'll bring more details about the structure in the second half on the first half of next year.
In parallel with the governance separation, we are also bringing a minority shareholder to the base metals platform. Why we're doing this? We're doing this for several reasons, right? One is because it will help to solidify and accelerate the separation. We are clear that this is gonna be an enabler, an acceleration, it will create an acceleration of the separation. It will highlight this is gonna be done at a multiple that is substantially bigger than the multiple that Vale trades at. We start to see one thing that is very important here, occurrence, right? Base metal is different from iron ore. We'll call for a significant amount of capital to deliver on that story. I mean, Deshnee highlighted some of the goals there. To get to 900 kilotons of copper, double nickel, we'll need more than $20 billion of equity, right?
It is fundamental for us to create a vehicle here that can fund itself without competing with the use of proceeds of iron ore. We all know that this enterprise should trade at a substantially higher multiple as compared to the iron ore. We are moving that direction. It is a first step of that vision. We are not gonna unlock value here in one year, right? We are gonna unlock value in the long run. If we have a team, a fully dedicated team with the right capabilities, a board with the right capabilities, its own balance sheet, being able to raise capital in the market, sitting on the level of resources that we are sitting at, we are very confident that we will unlock substantial value on the long run.
This initial transaction allows us to keep all the optionalities to do other deals down the road, to grow the business, go public, do different things. This is gonna be a path, and we appreciate that over time, and we are very confident that over time we will unlock value. That's an important one. We wanna make sure we check the box on this with you guys. Now, moving back to the flow of the presentation, we were very happy to see this year the evolution that we had on our ESG rating assessment. This is super important. You guys are in the investment community, you know how important this is to attract new investment, right? We were impacted by Brumadinho maturely, right? With all the progress we've done, this was a key priority for Eduardo.
At some point in time, we recall in 2019, we had 63 ESG gaps. We closed 90% of them. Eduardo highlighted some of the attributes. The first company to come up with Scope 3 reduction targets. The first one to put ESG targets in executive compensation, long-term executive compensation. We've moved it a lot earlier than our competitors from our perspective, and we are starting to see some progress there. You see, for example, MSCI, very important there, moving us to the same rating that we had pre-Brumadinho, right? It's not yet a good ratings. We should definitely improve from where we are, but we're starting to see some benefits and a result of that work. Sustainalytics, we know the team is doing their own assessment today. We are optimistic and hopeful that we'll see some improvement there.
All of that just validates that we are on the right track. We are also looking into our future. Deshnee Naidoo highlighted something that is very important. One of the key competitive advantage of Vale. We don't have to go anywhere to grow. I mean, we are in Canada, we are in Carajás, and we are in Indonesia. Three of the best provinces of mineral deposits in the world, and we are sitting in tremendous amount of resource. Serra Sul, we have 40 years of reserves, right? High grade, low carbon intensity as compared to our competitors. When you look at that future, we have the product to serve it, right? We have to explore them. We have to bring them faster at the right cost to the market. We've been, since last year, accelerating as they spend.
I think Deshnee showed some highlights there in terms of what we are seeing. We are very excited with what we are seeing. This is gonna secure Vale long-term value creation, and we are very excited with that. Now shifting to cost, and I'll talk a little bit about capital allocation as well. Last year, we came here and said, "Look, this is a priority. We are seeing inflation pick up. We're gonna work very hard to cut costs," and we've done it, right? We've reduced costs across the board at Vale by changing the way we do sourcing, revising spec, putting technology, reducing overhead. All of that has been done, which allowed us to offset pretty much all of the inflationary impact, ex fuel cost, during 2022.
You see our projection for 2022 on C1 here, 19.5-20. You see that all the impacts are due to volume. We are coming with lower volume this year as compared to last year, so unitary costs. The variable costs driven by diesel. Diesel is 60% up year-over-year. That's an irrelevant impact for us. For next year, we're assuming diesel stay as high. If it drops, it could be a benefit. We will continue to push very hard on the cost efficiency initiatives, right? This is something that we continue to do. Overall, we expect to deliver versus last year $800 million of savings through some of the examples that I've highlighted.
Some of the benefits that we are intending to capture in 23 will be offset by two major elements. One is the new way to operate. As Spinelli highlighted, you know, the filtration plants are coming online, dry stacking. That way of operation is more expensive, right? Still highly accretive, but more expensive. We're gonna see an impact on C1. We are seeing an impact of what we call geological inflation, especially in the Northern Range, right? Some of the licensing challenges that we highlighted in the northern of Brazil is impacting our cost of operations, right? We are having to drive longer, dig deeper for us to maintain productivity. Now, it's still highly accretive.
When the team asks for money there, that's a place we say, "Go and do it," because the margins that we capture in the Northern Range, in the north of Brazil are very attractive. Even though we have an increase here, it's still a very competitive C1 for the industry. More importantly, in the next one, we see the all-in. That's what drives margin, as you guys know, at the end, right? Here we have 22, 23, 26. We are high-highlighting 26 here as a target year for all the business. I'll show you later why. You see that there is an improvement in all of those metrics towards 2026. We bring more volume, we continue to perform on the cost efficiency initiatives, and you see iron ore getting closer to 40, and you see nickel at 10,000.
The business will continue. I think the key message here is Vale will remain a tier one cost producer in the industry, which will make us resilient across the cycle that the commodities will usually have. CapEx very stable. This year, around $5.5 billion. Next year, we are targeting $6 billion. A lot of the investment done on reliability of our operations, but also we're investing about $2 billion of accretive growth opportunities, right? The BME starting to do on Onça Puma Furnace too. We continue to see good investment opportunities, but it's a very disciplined CapEx program as compared to anyone in the industry, right? That's one thing that we feel very proud of.
This one is for you guys to help you guys model, because this is always a question in terms of what is the impact on our cash flow related to some of the reparations. I've said that last year that 2022, 2023, and 2024 are the heavy years for us in terms of disbursements, especially for Brumadinho and Mariana, right? This year, particularly if you see Brumadinho here, was a very heavy year, the highest in terms of cash outflow. Next year should start to normalize a little more, Mariana picks up, right? It's something that will stay with us, especially until 2024, it starts to come down afterwards. This is a little bit of a propaganda. We've done, we walk the talk in terms of cash return to shareholders.
We've returned $34 billion to shareholders in the last three years, 50% of our market cap. That shows, you know, how much capacity we have in terms of remunerating our shareholders. I'd like to close some of my remarks with this slide, right? When we look at the 2026 projections that we've laid out in terms of productions for all the business, we run some sensitivities on prices. We've run based on $90 per ton to $110. You guys can pick any range here. We do for nickel from $20,000-$24,000 per ton, copper $7.5 to $10.5. You see that this company can generate anywhere between $6 billion-$12 billion of free cash. This is CAFD, right?
Available cash for distribution almost. It's post-CapEx, post-reparation, post-everything, right? Available cash for distribution. We can generate anywhere between $6 billion and $12 billion of free cash. This includes, in my previous slide, $1.8 billion of reparation, right? If you were to do the math, this six is almost like eight, and the same with the 12. If you do what is the free implied free cash flow yield of Vale, you see this company can be a high single digit to a mid to high double digit free cash flow company in this space. Base case that we work with is low double digits, right? We think this company can generate low double digits on a sustainable basis. We'll continue to walk the talk in the sense that we will continue to return cash to shareholders.
Share buyback, as you know, we continue to believe is one of the most attractive investment opportunities that we have. By doing so, we are convinced that we will rate Vale, right? Over time, Vale will get rerated as we continue to deliver on those performance. That's what I had. For the benefit of the time, we'll skip the closing remarks with Eduardo. This is the message we wanna convey of being a sustainable mining company. We think this is gonna rerate Vale, but also the entire sector. Very focused on quality. I think the message today, you guys heard loud and clear. It's a quality play with a very disciplined way in terms of managing the business balance sheet and capital allocation. With that, I'll invite Ivan to set up the Q&A so we can get started. Thank you.
Okay. The audience here already knows the drill very well, right? I'm trying to queue the questions as I see hands going up, and then they all go together, right? Yes. Let me just wait a few seconds. We're gonna get some
Chairs here so we can all sit in front of you and get your questions. We also have our audience online. We'll try to gather questions, capture them, and see if I can combine questions as well. We need to be very disciplined also in our answers here, because I think we have about 35-37 minutes for the Q&A session. Yeah, let's get accommodated and then we'll start soon. I think, okay, John. I think Tiago was second. Carlos, I'm just gonna Leo. Let's do like this then.
Leo last.
Yeah. We'll There will be time for everyone. Okay, let me just get sit here maybe. Will you? Okay.
Put that one over there.
Yeah, makes more sense.
Bear with us, guys, and we'll start soon.
Thank you.
I can be here then, yeah. Thank you. Also for those that are here, of course, in the audience, if you can introduce yourselves, name, company, it's gonna be better for everyone here. Jo, yeah, go ahead.
You were amazing.
You were amazing.
Mm-hmm.
Jon Brandt, HSBC. Thank you for the presentation. Both of my questions relate to base metals. I'm wondering if you can expand a little bit on the 10% minority investor, the type of investor you're looking for. Depending on the valuation, the multiple that you get, maybe there's a inflow of cash of $several billion. Correct me if I'm wrong, you mentioned that to go up to 900,000 tons of copper could cost you upwards of $20 billion. The $3 billion, it's a good start, but surely you can self-finance this, you know, given your the balance sheet that you have, et cetera. I'm wondering, other than sort of $several billion that a potential investor would bring in, what other benefits do you see? I mean, is there anything else?
Could it be a miner with expertise, or are you looking purely at a financial company that just, you know, is bringing in money? So if you could expand a little bit on that and the rationale behind it, 'cause you painted an optimistic scenario for nickel and copper and EVs. So I'm wondering, is it more beneficial for shareholders to keep 100% of that rather than sell 10%, even at an attractive multiple, if you could think the market will continue to grow. My second question again on base metals, I'm wondering how you're going to monetize the attractiveness of your assets in terms of, you know, we know it's low carbon, we know it has, you know, very good geographical location.
I understand why companies like GM and other OEMs would want your material, surely there's going to be sort of competition from other OEMs, you know, over the next decade, given the rise of EVs. What are you getting out of securing long-term contracts with GM? Are you getting a premium? If you could help me understand how you're actually monetizing your low carbon strong geographical presence. Thank you.
Maybe I'll get started.
Me.
the base metals. Look, we are looking for a potential partner that will be additive to this story, right? In the sense that it's someone that will help us elevate the ESG profile. Someone with industrial knowledge, so technical capabilities. Those are the elements. It's not about a financial play. As you said, we don't need that. It's someone that will accelerate that transition. I think the way to see this is this is a journey of unlocking value in the long run, right? We believe by bringing a strategic partner that will help us make that transition, we will accelerate the ring-fence, we will accelerate the value creation, we will continue to maintain the optionalities. 'Cause remember, I've said up to 10%. We remain with 90+% of this business.
We will remain all the upside of the business going forward, but we have to do it right? We have to make sure we execute on the transformation. We have to show we firm up the growth plan. Once we are there, if we do have occurrence, then we may want to tap in instead of using our own cash. It's not mandatory. Vale can continue to follow, right? Continue to fund with its own balance sheet. It creates options for us down the road to support that growth. 'Cause as I said, the growth is very substantial, and we call for a lot of capital. This is a business that should be yielding a 14%-16% IRR on that development, right? It's attractive.
It's very important that we raise the most competitive capital, especially if our thesis that over time multiples of our future facing platforms will decouple from the rest. It's gonna be substantially more competitive to raise capital in that platform as compared. That's a thesis. If we get rerated as well as base metals, we continue to follow. That creates avenues of growth and avenues for us to raise competitive capital.
Just to add on, Gustavo's comment. We are biased by VLI, right? You know VLI's story. VLI was created in 2010 by myself and Spinelli. It was inside Vale. When we brought the partner is when the real game starts. The idea is all about execution, right? We don't wanna leave money on the table, but money is being left on the table as we speak, because we are not running the business well. There's a huge bet that execution is gonna be improved in that sense, and we're not leaving anything to that chance. That's what Gustavo mentioned. We're bringing a partner, as you asked. We're not bringing a financial institution that pays more or less, because this will anchor the execution of the business. Because this is key.
We have today something that worth $14 billion inside Vale, that can worth $35 billion or $40 billion, depends on... That's the value creation, right? We're not letting money go on the table, but for sure, we're gonna bring a partner, and we're gonna do that very cautiously. Very, because what we saw in VLI was exactly that. When it got the right governance, the right incentives, it grew. Then I think Deshnee can go over the nickel sulfate plant.
Yeah.
Okay. Sorry. Is there an update on the timing of when you want to do all this?
Yes.
So we're-
Okay, go ahead.
A lot of interest. As you can imagine, people really like this story and really see the value long term. We are very advanced. Expectations that first half next year, we'll be able to highlight the detail.
Answering your question, we are in a condition of choosing. That's I think, a very important thing. If we don't find the right partner that meets these requirements, we're gonna do it by ourselves anyway. Actually, I was interviewing somebody else yesterday, I made this exactly question to him. "If we don't find the right partner, would you come with us?" That's the attraction part, right? The guy said, "Yes, I'm with you." Again, I'm not tied to that to do the ring fencing. The ring fence is the most important action for us.
All right. Maybe the question on what does it mean for us in terms of some of these offtakes that we have done. Today we produce around that 175,000-180,000 tons of nickel. Unlike the rest of the nickel industry, we actually swap it. We produce 75% of Class 1, only 25% of the rest. We already get a premium above LME for a lot of those products. In terms of the agreements that we've had, you know, the various agreements, and we have built in some premiums for value in that as well. The relationships that we're building with the OEMs is not just a transactional one on offtake.
We are looking at strategic relationships in terms of how we can leverage each other's technology to further progress some of the waste to value opportunities, et cetera. In addition, as I said, you know, we really want to start that recycling business, not in terms of just creating our own, you know, supply chains to do it, but leveraging OEMs', supply chains, to do it as well. Yes, our products currently attract a premium, market-driven, and we are working agreement by agreement to look at how the low carbon can give us an additional premium on top of that, and that is what we have locked in already. Thank you.
Can I just ask also, let's keep at one question at a time, and we can just circle back if necessary. Okay. Tiago, go ahead, please.
My one question goes to Spinelli. N3 seems to be the key issue there in the Northern system, right? You mentioned in the presentation you expect the license for mid-2024. What are the risks you see there? If this process is further delayed, should we expect further increases in the C1? Because I believe you have to go deeper. There's water issues as well. What's the dynamics we should expect if this licensing process gets further delayed?
Yeah. Thank you, Tiago. We have two main sites there, S11D and North Range. North Range, you said N3 is not a big pit. No, it's not a big body. It's... That will support us in three, four... Like Mohu that we had in threone years ago. That will support a bridge to reach the N1, N2. That'll be you know, in the streamline that it's ahead of that. We expect to have... We are in the middle of the process, so we have the LP, so there's a previous license. We have the installation license we expect for next year. We have the one year to build the pit and start that. It's not only that is going on in North Range.
We also have, we are extracting ores from radios around cave, cavities that we can also add mass. That's another one that's just launched one, and we expect another one. What we will set that's the main challenge we have, S11D. S11D is coming with + 10. + 10 is almost commissioning. Gelado actually in North Range is going really well. We have S11D at + 20 that is coming with the crusher. We don't expect to bring back 140 million tons to North Range anymore, so that we need to keep this in mind. It's quite difficult to keep the flow of depletion equal to N3, N1, N2. That will be an average of 100 million tons. That's what we expect.
The offset is inside S11D with a lower cost, actually. You, what you mention is, yes, you have to go deeper. You have to haul longer. It's, in average, it's in our calculation that we saw here. There's no higher deviation because of that, because S11D can offset that. Going down, actually, because we're improving volume. S11D. S11D is even cheaper, right? The C1 for S11D is much cheaper.
Yes.
The C1 for S11D. If we switch from S11D to North Range, actually it's better. Remember when we're launching S11D, everybody's saying, "Oh, it's gonna destroy the market." S11D is the salvation of the market. In C1 basis, I think we can overcome that, but it's a huge challenge that we have to be very aware of. I think if we struggle to have 100 tons on the range, that's where the growth is gonna come, is from S11D. That's the bet that has to be done is on the execution and on the projects. In that sense, to not overpromise, we are on our hands. This doesn't need any. By the way, the license for +20 took two years.
Two years to get it, and we just got it last, I think two months ago. Now it's totally in our hands. Like I saw Salobo give, we do. When we get to do, we know how to do. That's, that's I think is in our hands to execute. Okay. I think the next one is Leo because he has the microphone, right? Is it Carlos or Leo? Okay. Go ahead, Leo. Sorry.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks, Vale, for the presentation. My question is on iron ore. For many years we talked about the aspirational volumes target of 400 million tons, right? I don't think anyone was incorporating that in their numbers, but that was the target, right? Today you're downgrading the number to 350, right? Or 340, 360. It's been highly debated, I think, over the past hours in the market. Just wanted first of all to hear you on exactly what's driving the move a bit more detail on what's driving the move. Second, is this more of an aspirational target?
Does it depend on the value over volume, or this is a firm target that we should incorporate and we should assume Vale really is reaching for that 350, 360 mark? I think there's been a big debate on how we should view this longer term target.
I think, Leo, I think, Let Spinelli detail, I think it's very important to bring to understand what we're facing here. When we had Brumadinho, we always wanted to go back, I'm talking here because I'm the only one that was there. We had this need to go back, we actually underestimate what's in front of us. We're like struggling with something that we saw that was in all the system, the Minas Gerais system. You saw the numbers. Even there was much more difficult than we anticipated. We're like hitting the knife, we started to understand what's going on. The real issue was coming from the north, from the northern range and of course the ramp up of S11D. We started to learn.
That's a learning process here. Look, why should we get back to front? Everybody was really scared about Vale bringing volumes because if we bring 80 million tons, we destroy the market, by the way. We start to match what we are able to do and what is the sweet spot that we can do. Why we need to rush? Why did we put this rope in our neck to pull it? We start to say, "Look, let's..." We started to position ourselves in this high, in this high-end system, yeah, on the agglomeration, on the pelletizing because we are moving. Spinelli didn't mention it in his presentation. The 310 next year is not the 310 of this year. In the same basis it's $500 million more in EBITDA.
It's we're not talking about the same 310. It doesn't matter the 310. It matters what's the iron content of what's there. What is their huge challenge? That's why we position ourselves in a much more slower ramp up because in the end we find a sweet spot between the restrictions that we have, and we have to be humble and honest to face them. We saw in that graph that Spinelli mentioned on the orange things, then you can look in details. It's very clear where is in our hands, where is in not in our hands. Again, makes more money than 400 million hectares. Sorry. I'm a nature-based guy. 400 million tons. Why should I still put this over my neck? I have the elephant to kill, the arm to kill elephants.
The day that I unbottleneck both Minas Gerais state and Serra Sul and the market is there, we have logistics for. Actually, we're discussing this with the governor of Pará. We have 40 million tons of excess capacity in Carajás. How can we work together to fill that gap? Of course for C1, as Tiago mentioned, of course we want to produce in iron ore in Carajás. Who doesn't want it? We have our own Simandou there. It's a matter of learning, okay? It's not like We decided to shift. Let's stop overpromising. Let's do what we are able to do, and let's do it. It's totally in our hands. What we're actually, if you see what in Torto.
Torto is coming on the, in our P 80, this probabilistic whatever it is, from I think second quarter, right?
Yes.
That's ridiculous. We have Torto built since April, but we're gonna only operate in April. One year to get a license. The day I have Torto, I can put Brucu tu to operate. I have high quality feeds. I don't have that now, why should I push the guidance to the market above 35 million tons of pellet? Let's do what we can do. That's basically the decision. This is more a credit to the shareholders as we speak than trying to find a just to be running to be the largest share. I don't wanna be the largest iron ore company. First of all, I don't wanna be a iron ore company. I wanna be iron solution company, I want to be the best iron ore company. Again, that's what we can do.
I cannot do it differently. Although we have. I'm not resting in this because as Tiago mentioned, the C1 is extremely important to us. There's a lot of money on the table because 40 million tons of iron ore at north is $4 billion or even $5 billion on the vein. That's more or less what our mindsets are guiding. This is natural. This is reasonable. What we can do, if we're able to debottleneck the north and the southern system, we can switch capacity. That we always talked about switching capacity to high cost operations, right? We can actually do the high, the value over volume strategy. On an, maybe on a more concise way, it's a learning. We learned, and we're taking the right direction.
We're not giving up because we do have the capacity infrastructurally speaking, and we have to debottleneck the run of mine.
Yeah, buddy. I mean, just to close because it's important. You should put that in the model, right? I think what Marcello Spinelli said is there's a lot less reliance. One, it's more conservative. I mean, the speed that Eduardo Bartolomeo is referring to, it's a very deep probabilistic scenario that we've ran internal. I mean, we've modeled in a very different way this year. Our, you know, confidence in terms of delivering substantially, because the reliance, especially in SLN V on licensing is a lot lower, right? Yes, this is a business of licensing at the end, but it's less reliant on license as compared to the prior guidance. You should certainly consider that in your numbers.
I think next one now is Sasson. Go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Daniel Sasson, Itaú BBA. My question comes on the cost front. I remember that you used to say a few years ago that your delivered in China cost would be something between $25-$30, and then you'd be comfortable with iron ore prices around maybe $70 per ton, right? Would be a level that you'd be profitable and would not stimulate new entrants to the market. Given the cost inflation and your new delivered in China cost expected to be around $42 in the medium to long term, has your forecast or the level that you feel comfortable with long-term prices changed?
What would be the level that you see that you believe would be decent for you to work on or that you aim to have to reach a profitability level that you would deem adequate for you guys?
Good question. Look, I think the cost curve of the sector changed completely, right? We've been saying this for a while. I think you've seen all the majors come in with big, higher numbers. The $70 per ton, I mean, our recent exercise has shown that in a sustainable base, $70 per ton would remove 200 million tons out of the market. That 70 doesn't exist. Forget that number, right? We've seen this. This year, even with China having a new starts 30% lower than last year, the price hasn't dropped, and it went to 80, then it came back. There's a lot of support from our perspective long-term for something around 90 to 100. That's for us. That's why we've modeled around 100, because we believe that's where the prices should be.
At 100, with my all-in of 42, this is a very profitable business, and we've shown this in the free cash flow generation, right? Certainly has changed. The all-in of the entire sector has doubled, and it's not coming back.
Okay, next one now is Carlos. Go ahead.
Carlos de Alba with Morgan Stanley. Good morning. Thank you very much for the presentation. Just staying on cost, on the nickel side, there is a big step down in cost between 2023 and 2026, a more progressive decline in corporate. How should we think about when modeling that big step down in between those three years? Is a gradual decline or is more of really 2026, once you maybe get to a certain level of volumes or a deployment of initiatives? On iron ore, just coming back, there is no guidance for 2026 on cost, but there is on premium realization, which really increases and is a wide margin in 2026.
Should we assume that the cost would potentially also increase together with that prioritization and margins do not expand that much, or should we bake in a big expansion or a significant expansion in margins because cost don't increase as or measurably?
All right. Maybe just start on nickel. Of course, I will add. Starting on nickel. What's driving the cost decrease, of course, we've got a lot more fixed cost dilution coming into it in terms of tons, number one. It's a different sort of tons, right? I wanna explain a little bit about that. The bigger driver is today, because we have the gap in the downstream processing capacity because of the ramp up, we're still expecting, especially on projects like VBME, we are opportunistically treating third-party material. That third-party material hits our cost on a 100% basis. We do make a margin out of it, but it comes into the cost.
Next year, we'll treat some of our highest volumes that we've ever treated on third-party, material, closer to around 23,000-24,000 tons. What then happens in 2026, our projects start to ramp up in an operations like VBME. Although I'd love to go back to this kind of the cost base of where we were with O Vão, VBME ramps and becomes two underground operations. There's gonna be a little bit more cost coming in, coming in then. That's simply to explain it. We get rid of then at that stage, the third-party, material. We'll, of course, always look at whether it opportunistically makes sense to treat, third party. Fixed cost dilution, we eliminate some of the third party.
Although we get the volume benefit, it does come like an operation like at VBME, slightly higher. But we have our CFO in the audience, and I'm not gonna put him under pressure. I think we all agree that the nickel cost, and although at today's prices, you know, is incredibly competitive, we need to do more. We are re-looking at our entire cost base over the coming year. Gustavo, of course, puts a lot of pressure on us to do that, to look at where we can start to re-look at the portfolio differently to bring those costs down. Today, I think 13,000 tons against $29,000 ton nickel price is not too shabby.
On iron ore, I think all-in, we've given the guidance for 26, right, going to 42. There's a drop there. It's similar path. I'm not providing guidance here, but similar path on C1, because we gonna benefit by dilution, higher volumes, and especially dilution with products that have lower C1 like SLN V, right? That we should see a benefit there as well. Okay. Alex, I think you're next.
Yeah. Thank you. Good morning. Alexander Hacking from Citi. My question is on the base metals separation. How much autonomy is the board of directors gonna be given the base metals board of directors, particularly as it comes to capital allocation? The reason I ask is that if base metals is tied by Vale's net debt target and tied by Vale's dividend policy, then doesn't that start to erode some of the kind of value creation opportunities that might be there? Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. That's on spot why we're doing separation, right? We wanna make sure that this business has its own balance sheet. It has its own source of capital. It has its own dividend policy. This business shouldn't be paying dividend eventually, right? Because it's a growth business different from iron ore. That's why it's so important for us to start creating that vehicle that over time will run by itself. We'll make sure that whatever we define in alliance with Vale Board, it's very important to make sure the Vale Board is supportive. We will create a very lean board structure. Provide the team with the right incentives, the right framework in terms of what good looks like for Vale and how the balance sheet should behave and what projects will have to come up for us to approve.
We'll have the right governance to protect ourselves and create value in the long run. That is on spot why we're doing this because this business has a very different dynamic as compared to iron ore, right? We wanna benefit from it.
I think just on the soft side, because you asked about time spent. Myself, I'm not gonna be the chairman, but myself or who else is in my position is gonna be sitting there. It's a Vale business. We're not selling this. We're keeping our hands all over it, but it's gonna have to have the different incentives. We are humble enough to learn what we learned again on the last 16 years, and that's a different path that we wanna go through. Of course we're gonna benefit from the Vale infrastructure. On the Vale arms, on the Vale influence on the ESG, for instance, that I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, that we do operate in Carajás by the way. It's the same idea about VLI again.
VLI is entrenched in our business. It is a separate business. We learned a lot about how to deal with the business because the mistakes and the things that we did right. We are very well aware that we need to be there, spend time there, give attention to the business because it's a different kind of animal and can be really, really big. That's one of the things we are willing to see happening in a different kind of profile. From the Vale Iron Solutions guy, it's safe. It's a safe harbor because you know you're gonna keep on growing because as Spinelli is making a joke because I'm pushing him against the base metals challenge, but it's still a huge growth.
Which iron ore company in the world can grow what as Vale can do? Nobody can do. Every other peer is struggling to keep its production. going downgrading. Actually, by the way, going down with lower grades, that's one thing that people are not putting. I think we should stop looking at this as in a mass on a volume base. You should start in asking, where is the 1/3 of high grade, a agglomerate that you said you're gonna provide to us into 2020, whatever date we are, 2022. That's where. Well, because that's the 1/3 that move us out from China that leaves us on a very sweet spot to really capture the margin. What happened on the margin with the pellets this year? Of course, this is a symmetry.
We cannot count on $100 above 65. When Ukraine left the market, we did $100 of premium. We don't want that because that's a very important thing here. We suffer substitution, right? When Deshnee start talking about the nickel business, the EV, somebody ask about OEMs, we are partners of the OEMs. When nickel price hit $70,000 in 2007, we made more money than we made in iron ore. What the Chinese did, they developed pig iron. We were 10 years with $9,000 of price. We never wanna get that back again. We want to supply decently with the right price our EVs manufacturers or else. That's a very important mindset. In the iron solution is the same. Everybody's scared about high-grade ore.
We need to tell, that's why I think the Carajás concentration is a huge breakthrough. If you didn't get it's important. We can manage to concentrate 200 million tons of iron ore because we can supply the high end because people are scared. We are all over our clients. I talk to them. They say, I won't name any clients. Said, "Where is gonna come the high grade? I cannot rely on you because then I'm doomed." What we do in the Mega Hubs is exactly that. Middle East is there already. Middle East has the cheap energy. They're shifting to energy to hydrogen. They're shifting to solar because then they want to build. They...
They have all the reactors for DRI. What we want to do is stimulate the construction of the reactors because we are saying to the guys, saying, "Look, guys, I can supply you. I can guarantee that you're gonna have supply of high quality." That's a totally different game from a 58% iron ore company. I hope I answered your question.
Yeah. When you talk classification, you should make each like it's a current tax, like 4 x a better.
Yeah.
That we should maybe once the base metals is separated, that the company could revisit its capital allocation framework to fit the needs of an independent base metals company.
Within base metals, yes.
Yes.
Well, no, overall capital allocation framework, Vale as a whole.
Yeah.
For Vale, Look, I think at the end, what is the capital allocation framework that we've been maintaining at Vale, right? One of the benefits of doing this carve-out and creating a potential vehicle that can fund itself is to continue to preserve that. If tomorrow I have an opportunity to do something highly accretive at base metals but at a higher multiple, I don't have to compete with that framework. It makes that framework even more preserved in the sense of this business continues to return most of its cash for shareholders. Meaning the Vale share.
Well, I guess what about. Sorry, I don't wanna monopolize. Like, what about the net debt target though, right? Let's say Base Metals has a great opportunity, doesn't wanna issue equity to pay for it, so we're gonna borrow money independently. That's gonna affect Vale's overall net debt framework-
Right.
Constrain the amount of money that the iron ore business will be able to pay out.
Yeah, we'll.
Like, how does that interplay?
We'll take that in consideration for sure.
Yeah.
Not to impact Base Metals. They have no recourse if they can raise themselves. Those things will be taken. For that, we need to have the balance sheet, right? They can perform on that balance sheet.
Okay, we have about 17 minutes for the session to end.
That's all.
Yeah, now we have Caio. Go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Caio Ribeiro here from Bank of America. Thank you for the presentation and the opportunity to ask a question. My question is, there's been some discussion lately on the U.S. and E.U. potentially adopting a carbon tax, right, on steel exports out of China. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on how that would impact, you know, your BF, DF, agglomerate demand growth projections going forward, and also your strategy to become an iron solutions provider. Thank you.
This one, yes. Okay.
That's the main game change we're gonna face. That is one of the components to increase the value for direct reduction. The premium will come not only for the VIU, but also for the taxes that will support the transition in every place. That's the reason why we are designing also a mega hub. We are studying that, a mega hub in the U.S. to support their demand. In the steel business, we don't see steel being traded. It's small trading as a steel, as a finished product. But in the intermediate product, like HBI or iron ore product like pellets or briquette, you have the trade.
The design is this: let's locate an industrial park close to the source of energy and supply this. That's, that's the benefit of that. That's the beauty of that, because we can design it the possibility where you can trade like HBI. You can take advantage and produce the reduction close to the source and transport after that. It's difficult to transport steel, but it's easier to transport raw materials and these intermediate products. The U.S., yes, is a target for us, like Mana is a target for us. I just, I just visit one month ago a client in Europe. They are installing a DRI site inside Germany. They're doing that, the first one.
They need to have another one because they need to apply the best friends they have there. Where is the second one? Now they understand that they can have an offshoring of the direct reduction part. That's the first part, the HBI, and keep the downstream in Germany because they are supplying BMW. They can keep the quality of the downstream and outsource the metallics to BOF and keep the downstream there. This is the kind of design you see in the world, is not only bringing energy or trading steel, but we need to design source of energy, iron ore quality, and be close to the source of energy. Another point is, in this transition, you're gonna talk about natural gas.
You also have carbon capture. That is important. carbon capture is closer to the geology of the gas. In the U.S., they are stimulating, you know, they're stimulating hydrogen and also carbon capture in a very competitive way. we are installing industrial hubs actually in these kind of countries. the candidates are the U.S., Mana, and also Brazil.
Brazil.
that's the kind of thing.
I think, Caio, just to add on that, I think this is the key element that we're trying to convey since the second one we sat here to talk to you, is what about the energy. When people start putting carbon tax on borders, it's because they're protecting their borders. There's a new geopolitical arrangement going on. We never thought we would be back to the U.S., never. We are developing, you know, for one client to develop a hub in the Gulf of Mexico. That's one thing you have to put in your minds. That's why we are joking with Spinelli again. There's a green steel going on.
Steel is gonna still be needed even to put the post to transmission to EVs, to put the EV strength and the cars. Different, by the way, the steel for the EV is different from the normal steel. There's a huge steel need on this green world that people are underestimating. All the time they talk about Vale, they talk about China. That really bothers because it's not about China only. Of course, it's about China. China is the price seller in the world. How can that be different? Where is the premium? Why people? Why we're partnering with GM. We're not giving anything for free, and they're not gonna pay anything more than they should, by the way, 'cause this is a win-win solution.
'Cause there is a huge carbon amount of taxes that can come, and we do that by on our price carbon for any investments, and they do the same. Nobody goes to do an investment and don't take it into account. That carbon is gonna be taxed. Otherwise, they're taking wrong decisions. Any project in Vale, we have a phantom price carbon of $50, for instance. Maybe people are taking more aggressive price for that, by the way. They should be doing, by the way, if they don't wanna make a wrong investment decision. We welcome the carbon taxation on borders because that this game has to be played, and that is the a fair game for everybody.
In the end we want to decarbonize the world, otherwise we won't decarbonize the world. You see what's happening with climate change. Like now in Brazil, every year is the most stranger rain. Like, we had a very strong rain this year. We had a very strong rain in 2020. Climate change is there. If people are not aware of that, we're gonna pay very expensive for that. Not only the carbon, by the way. That's the game that we're playing here. That's what I talk about the energy revolution. People are still, like talking, "Oh, there's trillions, there's..." That's why we are so keen to look. Look, we are not playing this game here. We are really acting on the game. We are going to reduce our Scope 1 and 2. Why is that?
It's about not only doing the right thing, because it's obvious doing the right thing, but because it's our business. That's what make our business so unique now. Why should I go against that? In a nutshell, or in a, we welcome the carbon tax.
Just one point. Believe that China is running, okay? They are going after that. The first off-taker of the hub in Saudi is a Chinese, so they are going after that. It's really clear in the Party Congress that environmental is a key strategy. Believe that they will grow in taxation and in all the environment to foster the decarbonization in the industry also. They have young fleets of the-
I know.
Yes.
We promised.
They are doing. They're going after it.
Short answers. One thing that everybody comes again, "Where is your premium, Vale? Why, what, where is the premium?" Margins and energy. That's all about. People I'm a metallurgical engineer. They pay premium because they need a recipe that delivers them productivity. If they're not making money, they don't need. If the price of energies is cheap, they don't need. That's what they're doing now. They're buying crap and putting in the air in the blast furnace. We don't sell crap. We sell thing that is good for when the energy is high and the margins are high. I want my clients to make money. I need them to make money. Energy is gonna be high. If people think energy is gonna be low, we're not gonna win the climate change challenge. That's all.
That's why if we believe in the climate transition, price of energy, hydrogen is not something cheap. It's water, of course, is available, but anybody that understands the business know extremely expensive. Luckily people make money as well. Then we get the premiums. We're gonna have those huge premiums, I think was Leo dimension, right? That's the premiums that 'cause then you have one-third of our production is high-end, Class 1, like nickel, and people are making money. That's the whole narrative on what's behind your question, by the way.
Okay. Rafael.
Rafael Barcellos, Santander. Thanks for the presentation. I have a quick. Most of my questions were answered, but I have a quick question on nickel. With this new production outlook, I mean, what is your breakdown between Class 1 and Class 2 going forward, and how could this help profitability as well? Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you. Class 1 will continue to stay at that. Today is about 75% of our production. Class 1 will continue to stay at that level, which is around a 145,000-150,000 ton mark. There's a lot of my nickel projects are replacement projects, you know, like BBME, Clayton Five, et cetera. We will maintain that. On the Indonesia side, even on that equity, you know, nickel that we bring in, that will say either ferro-nickel or it'll be MHP, which is for use for batteries. That will be over and above.
I would say the way to look at the business is maintain the current Class 1 nickel production rate around 145 to 150,000 tons, even in some of those mixes. Okay.
Okay. Rodolfo, please.
Hi. Rodolfo from JP Morgan. Just, you know, shifting gears a little bit. We've seen mining companies in the, you know, the recent years all trying to position themselves into the new mega trends, right? Some did, you know, enormous changes. I think what Vale is saying, "Listen, I have a very good position on the iron ore side, and nickel and copper are the obvious plays as well." As we think about capital allocation and also, you know, your portfolio of businesses, is really where this management team wants the company to be? Is there... You know, you sold a few assets in the past. The question is there anything missing? Could we see, you know, anything different?
Is there room for, eventually, as we go into this, to see M&A or to see investments in different business?
Thanks, Rodolfo. We are very, I would say not creative. I don't know. I think one of the things we lost the bandwagon was lithium.
I think that this company could take a look at the lithium on the new co. I don't think Vale, it's necessary to look at it. On the iron ore company, no. I think we have the best assets. There are obviously some synergies there are in Brazil with Anglo, you know that. It was already in the press. We might do something. We are talking to the Australians to be there. We want to have a foot in Australia, but not M&A. We learned the lesson. Today's the learning. You, you saw that our culture is learning together, by the way, right? The fact that we're not, we're never gonna go to Australia to operate any asset. We can go there and talk there. We have partners there.
We can bring our knowledge in on concentration, do things like that on a, on a JV basis, not on a. There's no huge influx of money to M&As. Our minds are not there. Our minds are still on the execution side. We are very mindful that we need to execute. You know my VPS chart. When I get to three, when I get this thing stable, when I'm able to deliver. Look, we have. We are fortunate. We have the best assets. Why bother? It's true. The only thing we regret, if you ask me, that we regret we lost the wagon was lithium. That eventually we could have done that when lithium was not trading at 20 times. Right? For, without that only. 'Cause I think if you remember the framework, we are very disciplined.
We are very disciplined. We don't, we are not trying to be the largest anything. We're not looking for that. We want our, as a team, to create the largest value. Again, that's the, let's leave that to, let's leave this to the end.
Yeah. Maybe if I can, I think what Eduardo said is important. We have already I mean, our key competitive advantage at Vale is the fact that we are sitting in tremendous amount of resources with infrastructure, knowledge of the environmental regulatory. For us, the value is accelerating the development of... We don't need to go to other places, right? Two, we don't have the currency to do it. I think one of these, one of the upsides that we're starting to create by having this strategic move with base metals is to start having an entity that eventually can do something. Today, just see what the recent transactional multiple that we've seen in our space, 10 times EV to EBITDA, right? Very challenging for us to pursue something at those levels. In the future, it may be not.
We have to create that path.
You were with us in the trillion dollar adventure. Remember? We learned something about the trillion dollar adventure.
Maybe we have three more minutes to go. Most of the online questions have been answered already, but there's one here. Since we're talking about premiums, I think it's good to talk about the short-term premium, Spinelli. The question here is that we have seen the price premium decline significantly because of the low profitability of the steelmakers in China, talking about the very short term here. In your opinion, Spinelli, what should be the trigger for this trend to revert in the short term, medium term, and to incentivize production of value for premium products? Also making a reference here about the potential decline in iron ore prices coming from higher usage of scrap in those different routes that you explained. Maybe you can go over that topic.
Okay. The premium short term, I'd rather just mention have a combination. You want to improve the efficiency of the blast furnace, or you want to reduce the cost of energy. That's the... We need volumes or we need to reduce cost of energy. Coke price in China now is increasing due to the seasonality. There is a trend, upside risk to premiums. On the other hand, we need to make money. The problem today that 80% of the steelmaker not make money. This is related to the price of steel. The systematic of growing must be sustainable. And short to mid to long term, we expect to be a sustainable business.
That will happen in China. Regarding that, we expect, you know, two components here, COVID relaxation that is going on, is undergoing. Also, all the stimulus to have a smooth reduction in the properties can support in first quarter and the second quarter the rebound of that, of the premiums. From the pellet side, it reflects in the direct reduction. We just reduced for first quarter, but it's a high premium, very good premium, more than $50. That's where we're going today. Regarding the market, the direct reduction market today, Mina, competes with the products that come from Turkish. The scraps today are in the lower level, so it's close to $200 a ton.
It's due to the seasonality again. It is winter, it's getting higher gas in Europe. They are competitive, so they decrease the price. That's the reason why we are, together with them, decreasing the premiums. It's a high, very high level premium.
Mm.
Blast furnace premiums, it's totally related to Europe today. We sell to Europe and JKT, and Europe is facing, you know very well, the problem of the gas. They are, now, you know, getting out of that. Our clients, direct clients reduced more than 20% of their production.
You still have a balanced market for pellet. You know, we are keeping $48 a premium. Over 65. It's a huge amount of value. That's a trend. As we leave the winter, we can see the blast furnace, you know, with more demand, and also we see a rebound in the first half of next year for pellets.
Perfect. We ran out of time. Before we conclude here, just wanna hand over to Eduardo.
Okay. Thank you, Ivan. Well, thanks a lot for your attention. I think it's two and a half hours, I believe is a long time of your time. Really thank you for taking the time to be here with us, listen to our story. I have a personal story I want to share with you that I think relates to the moment that we're living today. In 2015, I was have taking a ride with a very successful investor in Brazil. I was talking to him like he was going to a fund. I said, "Well, how do you make money?" As we end the conversation, I said, "When I ask, he's a..." He said, "Look at Vale." This is 2015. Vale is $2.
You remember? S11D being built. Price of iron ore.
30.
-$5. He's a very funny guy. Like, it's wrong. It's wrong. She made a lot of money. I was beside him, and I didn't buy Vale. That's not, that's why I have to work. Funny enough, the fact that the valuation of the mining company and Vale is wrong. That's the point that we want to make with you. If we believe what's going on in the next five years, the next 10 years, we need to rerate the whole length, the entire industry. Again, to sell my fish, to sell our fish, we believe we are taking the very, very disciplined actions and towards to capture this value. The next time we meet, please ask what you have done to be a responsible miner. Are you fostering the low carbon solutions?
Do you, like Rodolfo asked, are you still disciplined? If we're able to answer yes to you, I think we did our job. Again, thanks a lot for your time. Thanks a lot again. See you next year, okay? Thanks a lot.