OREANDA-NEWS. November 14, 2012. Brazilian miner Vale SA said that federal environmental authority Ibama has granted it an operational license to expand its Salobo copper mine.

Salobo is the second greenfield project being developed by Vale in Brazil and has a nominal capacity of 100,000 metric tons of copper concentrate a year.

"Investments in Salobo total USD 2.5 billion," Vale said. The expansion, or Salobo II, will be complete in the first half of 2014 at an expected expenditure of USD 1.7 billion, increasing total production capacity to 200,000 tons a year of copper concentrate, it added.

Salobo has 1.112 billion tons of proven and probable reserves, with an average grade of 0.69% of copper and 0.43 grams of gold per ton, Vale said.