Brazil CSN negotiating new iron ore port with Gerdau, Petrobras

Dow Jones/Fox News, 03/27/2012

Brazilian steelmaker Companhia Siderurgica Nacional SA (CSNA3.BR, SID) said it is discussing construction of a new iron ore export port in Brazil with steelmaker and mining company Gerdau SA (GGBR4.BR) and oil and gas producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR, PETR4.BR), or Petrobras.

The new port with the partners may be ready to emerge in 2015, CSN’s new businesses director Juarez Saliba told analysts on a conference call Tuesday.

The port project, named Porto da Pedra, will be sited at Itaguai in Rio de Janeiro state, southeast Brazil, alongside CSN’s existing Tecar iron ore export and coal import port, and its Tecon containers port, Saliba said, without giving an idea of the likely investment required nor the planned capacity of the new port.

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Gerdau is fined for buying coal amid Brazil tax investigation

Lucia Kassai – Bloomberg, 08/07/2011

Gerdau SA (GGBR4), Latin America’s largest steelmaker, said it was fined 337,000 reais ($213,819) amid a Brazil tax investigation involving coal purchases by steelmakers.

Gerdau is “investigating the matter,” the Porto Alegre- based company said in an e-mailed statement. The company wasn’t specific about details of the investigation. The fine was imposed by tax authorities in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, O Globo reported.

About 34 companies in Brazil bought coal from illegally deforested areas, said O Globo, a Rio de Janeiro-based newspaper, citing Paulo Cesar Lima, a Minas Gerais prosecutor.

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Fears Brazilian clout could dominate Peru

Franklin Briceno – Associated Press/Miami Herald, 07/12/2011

LIMA, Peru — The towering statue of Jesus on a cliff overlooking the Pacific looks, at first glance, eerily like Rio de Janeiro’s majestic Christ the Redeemer, a famed icon of Brazil on the Atlantic side of the continent. The resemblance is not accidental.

To many Peruvians, the new statue that rises 118 feet (36 meters) has become a potent symbol of Brazil’s growing commercial and political influence in this Andean nation and across South America.

It was sculpted and assembled in Brazil and its $1 million cost footed almost entirely by the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht.

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Gerdau head calls for probe into Chinese deal

Peter Marsh – Financial Times, 10/03/2010

The head of Brazil’s largest steelmaker has weighed into the row surrounding a planned US steel plant backed by a Chinese state-owned steel producer.

André Gerdau Johannpeter, chief executive of Gerdau, a Brazilian company with nearly 30 per cent of its production in the US, said hebacked calls for a US government investigation into plans by Anshan Iron and Steel to take a stake in a new steel plant in Mississippi beingorganised by John Correnti, a US steel industry veteran.

“I believe in free trade, but also fair trade,” Mr Johannpeter said in an interview at the World Steel Association’s annual conference in Tokyo.

“I am concerned when a government owns a steel company and provides it with subsidies and other forms of help in such a way that it affects its competitive position with privately owned producers.”

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