Brazil's Vale sees net profits of 3 bln U.S. dollars in first half

Brazilian mining giant Vale, the largest producer and exporter of iron in the world, reported on Thursday net profits of 9.896 billion reais (3 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of the year.

This marks a major turnaround for the firm, which had reported losses of 4.395 billion reais (1.34 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of 2015.

However, it is a strong performance in the first quarter that anchored Vale's strong results since its profits shrunk by 30 percent in the second quarter.

Vale explained this quarterly fall by saying it had paid 3.7 billion reais (1.13 billion U.S. dollars) to Samarco, the joint venture Vale runs with BHP Billiton, which was responsible for a massive toxic spill in November, labelled Brazil's worst ever environmental disaster.

Vale's EBITDA for the first semester reached 16.026 billion reais (4.9 billion U.S. dollars), a 40 percent rise year-on-year.

It also billed 45.27 billion reais (13.8 billion U.S. dollars) and sold 72.678 million tons of iron in that timeframe. Endit