Vale, the world’s second-biggest iron ore miner, said in a statement it planned to divest its loss-making Moatize coal mine and Nacala Corridor rail and port projects in Mozambique, to focus on its core operations.
Mitsui said separately on Thursday it has agreed to sell its stake in the mine and the infrastructure assets to Vale, the project operator, for $1 each, aiming to complete the transfer by year-end.
“It’s a terribly underperforming asset,” said analyst Mathew Hodge of Morningstar in Sydney. “Something meaningful needs to change for it to have saleable value.”
In 2019, Vale fully impaired the assets due to technical and operational issues and said it would revise its mining plan and overhaul its processing plants, before those plans were disrupted by COVID-19.
