The Materials Atlas

Iron Ore · primary Copper · co-product Manganese · co-product Gold · by-product

この場所が何であるか

Carajás sits inside protected Amazon forest reached by a 890 km railway. Its ore is clean enough that steelmakers pay extra for it because it cuts their own emissions.

品位 Around 65-67% Fe as mined, above the 62% benchmark, so it earns a quality premium.

A banded iron formation

Over two billion years ago, oxygen produced by early life met iron dissolved in the oceans and precipitated it. The result is millimetre-scale bands of iron oxide and chert laid down over hundreds of millions of years. Later weathering leached the silica out of parts of it, leaving almost pure iron ore. Schematic. Enriched zones can be tens of metres thick and hundreds of metres long. Original diagram, The Materials Atlas.

「品位」とは、岩石中に含まれる有用成分の割合のことです。品位0.5%の銅鉱山では、銅1トンを出荷するために199トンの岩石を捨てることになります。この一つの数値が、ある鉱体が鉱山になるか、単なる地質学的な興味の対象にとどまるかを決定します。

産出物

Iron Ore

Rust-coloured rock that is roughly one-third to two-thirds iron, and the single largest tonnage the mining industry…

PrimaryFe

Copper

The reddish metal that carries electricity better than anything except silver, and which humans have been smelting…

Co-productCu

Manganese

A brittle grey metal that steel cannot be made without, and that is now being used to stretch scarce nickel and…

Co-productMn

Gold

The metal that does not tarnish, does not corrode and never runs out once mined — which is why almost all of it ever…

By-productAu

「副産物」とは、意図して探したわけではなく、たまたま同じ岩石中に含まれていたために回収される金属のことだ。したがってその供給量は、当該金属自身の需給ではなく、主要金属の経済性に左右される。

所有者

企業	役割	関心度
Vale	Miner	Owner-operator

事業者の公表情報に基づく。大規模鉱山の所有権は変動するため、利用前に最新の企業開示資料で確認すること。

Carajás