Vale Base Metals announced on 2026-08-17 that its Salobo copper mine in Brazil has commissioned an autonomous haulage fleet of Komatsu 930E trucks equipped with the FrontRunner system. The deployment follows the company's announcement a week earlier that it is advancing a coarse particle flotation (CPF) project at the Salobo complex.
The CPF project is expected to raise annual ore processing capacity at the Salobo III plant from 12 million tonnes to 18 million tonnes, a 6 million tonne increase, while cutting energy consumption by roughly 10%. This would bring the complex's total processing capacity to 42 million tonnes per year, underpinning higher copper output from one of Vale Base Metals' core assets.
The broader mining strategy seeks to boost total mine movement by about 7% through fleet expansion and automated operations. VBM AHS project manager Deivid Guimarães said the autonomous truck start-up is not simply a technology installation but the result of structured planning. For metals markets, the combination of autonomous haulage and plant debottlenecking signals increased copper production capacity in Brazil and highlights the industry's push toward automation to control costs and improve operational reliability.