Vale Base Metals

Vale Canada Limited (formerly Vale Inco, CVRD Inco and Inco Limited; for corporate branding purposes simply known as "Vale" and pronounced in English) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazilian mining company Vale. Vale's nickel mining and metals division is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It produces nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, gold, and silver. Prior to being purchased by CVRD (now Vale) in 2006, Inco was the world's second largest producer of nickel, and the third largest mining company outside South Africa and Russia of platinum group metals. It was also a charter member of the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average formed on October 1, 1928.

History

Founding of Inco

The company was founded following the discovery by blacksmith Tom Flanagan in Copper Cliff, Ontario of chalcopyrite deposits, while the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built in 1883; the township of Sudbury soon followed in 1884 when JL Morris, provincial land surveyor, laid it out. Initially, ore was shipped for smelting to a plant in Constable Hook, New Jersey, owned by the Orford Copper Company. Processing revealed in 1884 that the ore was also rich in nickel and exploration tests revealed an enormous potential. In 1893 Robert M. Thompson patented the Orford "Tops and Bottoms" process; this was the first commercially viable method of separating Pentlandite-borne Nickel from the CuFeS₂ Chalcopyrite-borne Copper.

The Spanish-American War focused the eyes of the world on nickel steel, because in the Battle of Manila Bay and the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, the American losses were negligible while the Spanish losses were catastrophic. This was the result of the nickel steel used by the Americans to clad their hulls. The Spanish Navy had ignored to their peril the 1889 paper by James Riley, "Alloys of Nickel and Steel", and the market for nickel was made. The next year saw the introduction by Bethlehem Steel of a virtually indestructible nickel steel automobile axle.

Nickel mining started in Sudbury, Ontario in 1902, and that year, the International Nickel Company, Ltd. was created by Thompson and John Pierpont Morgan in New York, NY as a joint venture between Canadian Copper Company, Orford Copper Company, and American Nickel Works, with a capitalization of $28 million. In 1905, Monel alloy was discovered by Robert Crooks Stanley (1876-1951) and named for Inco President Ambrose Monell. Meanwhile, the development of austenitic stainless steel was launched by a pair of Krupp engineers known today as AISI Type 304 or simply 18/8, which indicates a nickel content of 8%. This novelty would assure the 20th-century success of the firm.

In 1916, the International Nickel Company of Canada, Ltd. was incorporated in Copper Cliff in Sudbury; this entity was a subsidiary of New York-based Inco. The company built a new refinery in Port Colborne in 1918 and during the following year, the company first began using the trade name Inco.

On 31 October 1928 the Canadian body corporate and its American parent switched roles and the Canadian became the parent. On 1 January 1929 the corporation acquired the British-owned Mond Nickel Company in exchange for treasury shares, to solve the Frood Mine problem. By 1931, Stanley had progressed to President of the firm. Between 1935 and 1939, sales exceeded 200 million pounds annually, which
was more than 80% of world consumption. A significant proportion of these sales found their way to the United States, with other notable markets including the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany. Approximately 9 percent of company's total sales from 1934 to 1939 were to Nazi Germany, mainly to meet the growing demand of the country's armaments industry.

Head office to Toronto

When Robert Crooks Stanley became president of INCO in 1922, priority was given to high quality research. A head office for the Canadian operations of Inco was soon established in Toronto. In 1922 Stanley closed the Bayonne NJ refinery in favour of the new electrolytic one in Port Colborne, Ontario, while at Alfred Mond's nickel carbonyl refinery in Acton, London Inco was able to produce platinum. As early as 1930, Canadian Industries Limited (CIL) had a sulfuric acid plant located in Copper Cliff; its product, which came in synergy with the smelter there, was used in CIL's Nobel, Ontario gunpowder factory.

Stanley's excellent contribution to Inco was his devotion to alloy research, which contributed to the expansion of the market for the base metals it produced. In his first Annual Report in 1922 after becoming President, Stanley informed the shareowners of the new Development and Research Department. At the same time, management told the directors that "we had no market developed or Monelwhich would justify a mill, but we assured them that with a mill we could build a market which would earn the preferred dividend." The directors thereupon invested three quarters of all the liquid resources of the company into the Huntington WV plant to satisfy a market which management had just said did not exist. The Monel alloy family grew into more than a dozen members, and Duranickel, Permanickel, Ni-span-C, Inconel X and Nimonic were all discovered under his watch, most at his Huntington Works baby.

JL Agnew originated the Geology Department of the firm, as a result of his investigations into the Frood Mine problem, which precipitated the 1929 merger with the Mond Company. This department was instrumental in the Manitoba discovery 25 years after his death.

On 1 April 1929 the Ontario Refining Company (ORC) was formed in a joint venture between the American Metal Company, the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company, Inco and Ventures Limited (which was the parent of Falconbridge Limited). The first and third named companies had each a 42% share. By June 1935 the ORC, which worked at the electrolysis of copper, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Inco. The ''Inco Triangle'', a monthly newsletter for the company, had its first issue of eight pages in September 1936.

During World War II, Inco's Frood Mine produced 40% of the nickel used in artillery by the Allies."Sudbury nickel mine stops operations at year's end due to falling prices"
''Toronto Star'', October 19, 2012. From 1939 to 1945, Inco delivered to the Allies 1.5 billion pounds of nickel. During the war it almost doubled its yearly output of ore. After the war, demand for nickel remained high because of the Korean War and the Cold War of the 1950s.

Because of the Mond merger, Inco had ownership of nickel properties in Petsamo Province, Finland (now known as Pechengsky District) and had invested a fair sum in them. These properties were conquered by the Soviet Union during the Winter War of 1939-40. As a result reparations needed to be negotiated between Inco and the Soviet Union, through the Canadian government after 1944. The parties settled for $20 million, which was paid with difficulty.

Also because of the Mond merger Inco was the owner of the Nimonic technology that allowed gas turbines and jet propulsion engines to function. This research was performed during 1940 at the request of the Air Ministry of the British government for materials that would withstand the elevated temperatures seen in these applications.

Also during World War 2 was developed ductile iron, by Keith Millis, Albert Gagnebin and Norman Boden Pilling. The scientists were curious to replace chromium as an alloy agent in abrasion-resistant cast iron and they stumbled upon the amazing ductile property of magnesium-treated iron, which transforms carbon flakes into spheroids and thus ductilizes the whole.

In 1948 Sproule and Harcourt patented ( and ) a new development of the Orford process, in which careful cooling of the matte enabled the precipitation of a small amount of nickel-copper alloy which contains platinum group metals besides. This is crushed, finely ground and treated by flotation and magnetic separation to part the constituents. This work was the culmination of experiments begun in Copper Cliff by Roy Gordon in March 1938 and was one of the reasons why his career ascent was so meteoric.

In its heyday during the 1950s, Inco produced 85% of the world's nickel supply. In 1956, geologists discovered the Thompson, Manitoba ore body and named it for Inco Chairman John Fairfield Thompson. The first Canadian-born President of Inco, who held the office between 1960 and 1966, was named James Roycroft Gordon.

The year 1969 saw a bloody four-month long strike at Inco's Sudbury operations, and the firm's share price was cut in half.

In 1972, it was decided by Chairman L. Edward Grubb, ostensibly to pacify the labour unions, to move the head office from New York to Toronto where it resided in the Toronto Dominion Centre. Also in 1972 the Inco Superstack was built in Sudbury; at the time senior technical staff like Paul Queneau thought this would solve the SO2 acid rain pollution problem. And in 1972, the Soroko project in Indonesia was begun together with involvement from six Japanese firms who together held a 40% share in the project.

In July 1974 Chairman L. Edward Grubb decided to diversify Inco's holdings and make the first ever hostile takeover bid for Philadelphia-based Electric Storage Battery Company (ESB), aided by Morgan Stanley. United Aircraft Corporation entered as white knight and served to increase Grubb's bid to a 110 percent premium above the pretakeover price. The merger was characterized as a "major blunder" and by December 1981 Inco was looking to exit the battery business. In February 1983 Inco sold most of its holdings in Exide and exited the battery business. ESB manufactured amongst other products the Ray-O-Vac battery.

The 1975 Inco annual report had a picture of a supersonic Concorde jet which used nickel and titanium alloy blades forged by Daniel Doncaster and Sons, a 1975 acquisition of Inco (Alloy Products) division. A picture of Prince Charles talking with a Doncaster operator of electronic blade inspection equipment lies alongside it. In 1976, the company’s name was officially changed to Inco Limited.

Inco also built and operated a facility that included a research center overlooking Blue Lake in New York's Sterling Forest area. That site was sold in the 1980s.

Downturn

During the first half of the 1980s Inco bled a lot of red ink, "which caused the elimination during the five years from 1980 of more than 12,000 jobs worldwide, or 35 percent of its work force, including more than 6,000 jobs in Canada." It then produced one-third of the world's nickel. Charles F. Baird was the chairman and CEO. By 1985 Inco (Alloy Products) division included: Doncasters Blaenavon Ltd Special Alloy Products Division, Doncasters Monk Bridge Ltd, Doncasters Sheffield Ltd, Doncasters Moorside Ltd, Beaufort Engineering Ltd, Whittingham and Porter Ltd, I.A.P.L. Technology Centre and Inco Selective Surfaces Ltd.

The SO2 abatement project (SOAP) instigated a $600 million clean-sheet recomposition of the smelter plant that allowed INCO to capture 90% of their emissions, and commercialize sulfuric acid.

In late 1994, Diamond Field Resources discovered nickel, copper and cobalt ore bodies at Voisey's Bay Mine (VBM) in Labrador, Canada. The deposit was estimated to contain 141 million tonnes at 1.6% nickel and was imagined by the then-chieftains of Inco as a 21st-century replacement for the waning Copper Cliff resource. In 1996, the VBM was purchased by Inco for 4.3 billion Canadian dollars. Some say that Inco overpaid for VBM because of the presence of Falconbridge at the auction.

In order to generate cash Inco sold its manufacturing sites of nickel alloys to Special Metals Corporation in 1998 for US$408 million. In the previous year, the division had generated US$668 million in revenue.The New York Times, July 10, 1998 Company News: Special Metals agrees to acquire alloys unit from Inco
/ref> Special Metals Corporation however filed Chapter 11 in March 2002.

In February 2001, nine-year CEO Michael Sopko stepped down while he announced a $400 million profit. He was replaced by New York lawyer Scott Hand.

In 2002, the VBM purchase was regarded as a "costly blunder... when the company had to write down a third of the value of the $4-billion acquisition only six years after the purchase," but in early 2004 that did not prevent Hand from making a bid for Noranda and Falconbridge, both of which were at the time owned by Brascan, who then declined the Inco offer. The bait in the water attracted Mick Davis and Roger Agnelli. Hand was not deterred from his takeover madness and went to Australia to try his luck in the Western Mining sweepstakes, where he was outbid by XStrata's offer of US$5.7 billion and the ultimately successful BHP Billiton bid of $7.3 billion. Not last in the waters was Teck Cominco's Don Lindsay, a product of CIBC World Markets and who had advised Falconbridge in their failed acquisition of VBM.

Takeovers (2005–2006)

On October 11, 2005, Inco's CEO Scott Hand announced a friendly takeover bid to buy out the operations of longtime rival Falconbridge for $12 billion. If approved, the deal would have made Inco the world's largest producer of nickel. Davis's Xstrata (which already owned ~20% of Falconbridge shares) subsequently submitted a hostile takeover bid for Falconbridge, resulting in a bidding war between Inco and Xstrata. The Xstrata bid was successful, but not before Falconbridge employed a poison pill to delay the acquisition, raising its share price from $28 to $62.50 in the meantime.

Teck Cominco submitted a hostile takeover bid to purchase Inco on May 8, 2006 for $16 billion if it agreed to abandon its takeover of Falconbridge. On June 26 of the same year, Phelps Dodge submitted a friendly takeover bid to purchase a combined Inco and Falconbridge for around $40 billion; that offer was also withdrawn because of the failure of the Inco-Falconbridge merger.

On August 14, 2006 Brazilian mining company Vale S.A. (aka CVRD) extended an all-cash offer to buy Inco for $17 billion. That offer received approval from the Canadian government's investment review agency on October 19, and was accepted by Inco shareholders on October 23. Part of the takeover deal was that CVRD would operate Inco as a separate nickel mining division; all of CVRD's nickel operations, including mines at Onca Puma and Vermelho in Brazil, were transferred to Inco's management. Inco was delisted from the NYSE on November 16, 2006 and the TSX on January 5, 2007. According to its current web site, Inco is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Vale (formerly CVRD).

As subsidiary

The 2009-10 Vale-Inco strike lasted 15 months; one of the longest on record in Canada.

In May 2010, Vale changed the name of Vale-Inco to simply Vale, stating the change is "a milestone that aligns it more fully with other Vale operations worldwide and reflects its position as part of the world’s second largest mining company".

In 2015, Vale was said to be exploring an IPO of its base metals unit for $30–35 billion, in order to lighten its debt load.

Reorganisation as VBM

In May 2023 it was announced that Mark Cutifani would be appointed as Chair of the new Vale Base Metals (VBM) subsidiary of global mining giant Vale S.A. Vale was looking to divest from its tar baby, as early as December 2022. At the time VBM was a supplier to Tesla and General Motors (GM). Reports were afoot that GM, Mitsui, and the Saudi Public Investment Fund were interested buyers of a 10% stake. Former Tesla executive Jerome Guillen would join the "energy transition board" of VBM along with Cutifani.

In May 2023 it was announced that VBM had entered a joint venture with the Ford Motor Company and Huayou Cobalt on a $4.5bn nickel processing facility in Indonesia.

Vale spun out its metals business as a separate ringfenced entity headquartered in Toronto, with an independent board chaired by Cutifani. That process completed in July 2023. The unit was then one of the world’s largest producers of nickel, copper, and cobalt, and had operations across the globe. The parent company's chief executive Eduardo Bartolomeo stated that Cutifani could help the division explore a future “liquidity event”. In early 2023, the parent company earned 80% of its profits in its South American iron mines, and the balance from its Base Metals group.

In July 2023 Cutifani sold off 10% of the capital to the Saudi Public Investment Fund and 3% to Engine No. 1. The value of the transaction was $3.4 billion.

As of May 2024, Vale Canada was reported to have a sales agreement with " Xstrata Copper Canada" for the sale of copper anodes and copper concentrates produced in Sudbury.

Criticism

In 2006 Inco was removed from the FTSE4Good Index for failing to meet their human rights criteria. The company has had disputes with native groups and environmental concerns over mine runoff.

Labour relations

Employees for Inco in Canada are represented by the United Steelworkers throughout all the mergers. Because of the mergers, the United Steelworkers signed an agreement with all the unions that represent mining workers in countries where Vale/Inco operate to "work together cooperatively and strategically as global partners, to build the bargaining power of worker." The unions include Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores no Setor Minera, SINTICIM, Union syndicale des ouvriers et employés de Nouvelle-Calédonie, Union des Syndicats des Travailleurs Kanak et Exploités, Fagforbundet for Industri og Energi, Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, and the United Steelworkers.

Current operations

Ontario, Canada

* Coleman Mine, Vale's flagship nickel mine
*Copper Cliff North Mine
*Copper Cliff South Mine
* Creighton Mine
* Garson Mine
* Port Colborne Refinery
* Clarabelle Mill
* Totten mine
* Copper Cliff Smelter
* Copper Cliff Nickel Refinery

Manitoba, Canada

* Birchtree Mine
* Thompson Mine

Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

*Voisey's Bay Mine
*Long Harbour Nickel Processing Plant

Indonesia

*Vale Inco's Indonesian joint venture PT Vale Indonesia Tbk, an Indonesian company which is 20 percent publicly owned ( IDX:INCO), is located in Soroako. In August 2011, a dispute began because PT Inco broke its promise to build 2 smelters in Pomala and Bahodopi in 2005 and 2010 respectively, and to hand over 50,000 hectares of its 118,000-hectare concession to locals. Based on the latest feasibility study, only the Bahodopi smelter facility was possible. The dispute might go to court.
*October 11, 2011: After starting operation of its third hydropower plant at Karebbe with an output of 130 megawatts (MW), the company would increase production from 73,000 metric tons to 120,000 metric tons per year over the next five years. The first and second hydropower plants are located in Larona and Balambano with a combined output of 365 MW. As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility plan, the company has given a total of 8 MW from the plants to Perusahaan Listrik Negara (Indonesian Government Electric Company) for free.

New Caledonia

*Vale Inco New Caledonia

In popular culture

Inco is a central theme in the Stompin' Tom Connors song " Sudbury Saturday Night". More recently, the Creighton Mine, owned by Vale and hosting the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, figures largely in the plot of Robert J. Sawyer's '' Neanderthal Parallax'' trilogy.

See also

* 1978 Inco strike
* 2009–2010 Vale Inco strike

References

Filmography

* Joseph R. Kohn and Charles H. Wasserman (1956) - ''MILLING AND SMELTING THE SUDBURY NICKEL ORES''
* Keith Harley (1973) - ''The Winning of Nickel'' (Westminster Films)

{{Authority control

Vale S.A.
Nickel mining companies of Canada
Mining in Ontario
Companies based in Toronto
1902 establishments in Ontario
Non-renewable resource companies established in 1902
Economy of Greater Sudbury
History of Greater Sudbury
Canadian subsidiaries of foreign companies
Canadian companies established in 1902
Economic history of Canada
Companies formerly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange
Former components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
Metallurgical industry of Canada