Vale’s Sudbury operations face challenge and opportunity, COO says – by Jim Moodie (Sudbury Star – February 11, 2020)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Demand for nickel will grow, but there is ‘unparalleled competition’ to supply the metal, Dino Otranto says

The future looks bright, if challenging, for Sudbury’s biggest miner, members of the local business community heard Tuesday.

“We have fundamentally a fantastic business,” said Dino Otranto, the new boss of base metals with Vale, at a Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce luncheon. “There is great opportunity and great potential, but we’ve got some hard work to do, and that’s the message — we truly have a transformation ahead of us.”

Otranto, appointed last year as COO for Vale’s North Atlantic Operations, said there is still an ample supply of ore in the Sudbury Basin and demand for nickel and other metals will only grow with the expansion of the electrical-vehicle market.

At the same time, however, “we are facing unparalleled competition,” he noted. “Our friends in the east will take over this year as the biggest nickel producer — a mantle we have had for as long we can remember — and they established that business in years, not decades, or 100 years.”

Otranto was born in Germany but spent many years working down under with BHP and South 32, where he picked up an Aussie accent. He said he was happy to come to Sudbury with his wife and two young boys, as communities of this nature and scope are more familiar to him than a megacity like Toronto, and he has no plans of pulling up stakes any day soon.

For the rest of this article: https://www.thesudburystar.com/news/local-news/vales-sudbury-operations-face-challenge-and-opportunity-coo-says