Denmark's FL Smidth Wins $40 Million in Equipment Supply Contracts for Vale Inco's Long Harbour Nickel Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--FL Smidth (Copenhagen, Denmark), Denmark's leading equipment supplier to the cement and minerals industries, has announced that it has been successful in gaining contracts worth about $40 million from Vale Inco Limited (Toronto, Canada) to supply equipment for the $2.5 billion Long Harbour nickel processing plant in Newfoundland, Canada.

Vale Inco, a subsidiary of Vale S.A. (NYSE:VALE) (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), is the world's second-largest producer of nickel, which is widely used in the production of stainless steel and batteries.

Under the terms of the contracts awarded to FL Smidth, the company will supply two ball mills, one for concentrate and the second for the limestone-grinding system, together with 13 EIMCO thickeners and clarifiers, which will be part of the hydrometallurgical flow sheet system used to recover nickel, cobalt and copper from Vale Inco's mine at Voisey's Bay in Labrador, Canada.

The ball mills are to be used in the comminuting (grinding to a powder form) and sedimentation processes in the processing plant, while the EIMCO thickeners and clarifiers use deep-tank technology to ensure maximum gravity consolidation of the embedded solids.

The Voisey's Bay complex at Labrador consists of an integrated mine and concentrator plant, which was completed in November 2005. Initial construction on the hydrometallurgical processing plant in Newfoundland began in April last year and is scheduled for completion in February 2013.

The engineering, construction and supply contract for the processing plant was awarded to Fluor Canada Limited (Calgary, Alberta), a division of Fluor Corporation (NYSE:FLR) (Irving, Texas), in May last year, under strong competition from SNC-Lavalin Group Incorporated (TSX:SNC) (Montreal, Quebec).

Representatives from the FL Smidth offices in Bethlehem and Salt Lake City, Utah, are working closely with staff from Fluor on the provision of the design, engineering and supply of these key components. The two companies also will work together on the pre-assembly, shipment and installation of the items to the site, followed by the final commissioning.

The Voisey's Bay site has been the subject of disputes between Vale Inco and the mineworkers belonging to the United Steelworkers Union (USW). Operations at the site have been idle since the mineworkers went on strike in August last year. The dispute centers on changes that the company proposed to the employee bonus system.

In December last year, Vale Inco submitted a new proposal to the USW, and the two parties resumed discussions in January this year. However, talks once again broke down after a few days, with Vale Inco claiming that the local USW representatives lacked the authority to negotiate, and the USW responding that the company in turn was stonewalling on many issues, including the contentious point of using non-union workers.

Following the failure of the recent round of talks, Vale Inco announced at the end of January that it intended to resume mining and milling operations at the complex, using non-striking employees--that is, workers who do not belong to the USW--who will be trained to run the operations.

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