Vale iron ore shipments from the Ponta da Madeira port in São Luís, in the Northern part of Brazil, were 21% lower than expected in July, according to Marine Traffic.
Ponta da Madeira is one of the most important iron ore and manganese loading terminals in the world and is where Vale ships its high-grade Carajas ore.
The terminal has a nominal loading capacity of around 230 million tonnes per year and is also one of the only ports in the country suited for the ultra-large Valemax ships.
Vale announced last month the restart of its loading activities at ship loader 6 (CN6) at Ponta da Madeira after 5 months of maintenance because of a fire.
According to Marine Traffic data, however, the company only shipped 14,974 million tonnes from the scheduled 18,9 million tonnes last month.
The company has an accumulated delay of 14 million tonnes in relation to the target set for 2021 of 206 million tonnes. Accumulated shipments at the end of July were the lowest in 4 years.
Vale flagged potential production setbacks last month amid temporary issues at multiple iron ore mines, but executives said the Brazilian miner was still on track to ramp up output in the second half of the year.
The world’s largest iron ore producer revised down its guidance for year-end production capacity to 343 million tonnes per annum from 350 million tonnes previously but said is on track to hit its annualized 2021 guidance of between 315 and 335 million tonnes.
Source: Mining.com