Skip to content

Living in an uncertain time

While there are always exceptions, most of us seem to have a well-developed preference for certainty over uncertainty, regardless of whether the matter at hand is good news or bad news.

While there are always exceptions, most of us seem to have a well-developed preference for certainty over uncertainty, regardless of whether the matter at hand is good news or bad news. Good news, of course, is the highest preference, but even bad news - once delivered - can be dealt with through our often-impressive coping skills.

Unfortunately when it comes to our preferences, life just isn't like that or so simple much, if not most, of the time. We spend a lot of time forced to live - and deal - with uncertainty, be it in our personal or work lives, or collectively in our lives as a community, province, nation or even globally. Vale has just reminded us of that reality of uncertainty through Peter Poppinga's Sept. 6 edict to managers around the globe that every aspect of the base metals business is under review.

The process is expected to be a short one, lasting four to six weeks.

The good news for Thompson is Vale is "exploring the possibility of delaying the closure of the smelter and refinery by one to two years to maintain processing capacity and flexibility as operations elsewhere ramp-up. This is a potential positive development for Thompson, however, there are still issues that need to be addressed around feed, regulatory compliance and the condition of the assets before we can commit to a new schedule."

The brief but welcome reprieve for the Thompson smelter and refinery could come about because of construction delays at the Long Harbour processing facility in Newfoundland that Vale had planned to open next year.

The bad news is that nickel worldwide is in a cyclical downturn and most of the important decisions ahead aren't going to be driven by the orebody here in the still mineral-rich Thompson Nickel Belt. If only it were so.

Vale's profit has missed analysts' estimates in four of the past five quarters and they have called on the company to sell at least part of its base metals business and refocus on its more profitable iron-ore business. A soon-to-be-merged Xstrata and Glencore is considered to be the only player with deep enough pockets likely to be an interested buyer for Vale's base metals business, should it be for sale, which the Brazilian mining giant says it isn't.

Poppinga, who replaced Tito Martins in Toronto as chief executive officer of Vale Canada last November, is also executive director of base metals globally for Vale, the world's second-largest nickel producer after Moscow-based MMC Norilsk Nickel, which has its main Russian production facilities on the Taimyr and Kola peninsulas. Vale, for its part, has mining operations on five continents in 38 countries. It is also the second largest mining company in the world by market capitalization.

Poppinga's Sept. 6 message was passed down the line the following day to employees here in Thompson by Lovro Paulic, general manager of smelting and refining, Don Wood, general manager of production services and Mark Scott, general manager of mining and milling, in a jointly-issued letter. " every aspect of the base metals business is under review, including our Manitoba Operations, and we may face new challenges and new opportunities in the coming months as a result," the local senior management triumvirate wrote.

Manitoba Operations hasn't had a single senior executive head since Vale abolished the position of president of Manitoba Operations in July 2009, and Brian Maynard, after just 14 months in that job, accepted a job working with Vale Australia's coal operations. Maynard is now group chief operating officer of Ferrexpo plc, a Swiss-headquartered resource company with assets in the Ukraine, while Mike Sylvestre, Maynard's predecessor in Manitoba Operations, went from here as president in June 2008, to Vale's New Caledonia Goro nickel company, before moving to James Bay Resources Ltd. and Castle Resources Inc. Vale declared force majeure last May - which essentially frees it from liability or obligation because of extraordinary circumstances beyond its control - following an accident at its acid plant in New Caledonia.

Poppinga was born in Rio de Janeiro. He holds a master's degree in business administration from Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil. He received a degree in geology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1980 and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen, Germany and a post-graduate degree in geology and mine engineering from Clausthal University of Technology in Clausthal-Zellerfeld Germany in 1984.

He worked for S.A. Mineracao da Trindade (SAMITRI) from 1984 until it was acquired by Vale in 1999, when he joined Vale as commercial director and general manager of the iron ore business in New York for Vale subsidiary Rio Doce America before moving to Rio Doce International, Belgium where he led Vale's market and sales activities in Europe from 2000 to 2004. Between 2005 and 2007, he was president of Vale International S.A. in Switzerland, and from 2008 until the end of 2009 he was executive vice-president human resources at Vale (then Vale Inco) in Toronto.

In January 2010, Poppinga moved to Australia when he was named vice-president for base metals operations for the Asia and Pacific region where he was responsible for operations in Indonesia, New Caledonia, China and Japan.

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks