A National Solution

For seven years Cleveland's Hanna Mining Co. has been marooned in frustration on top of some of the world's richest mountains of iron ore, unable to move more than a trickle of it onto the world market. Despite a contract with the Brazilian government empowering it to tap 300 million tons of high-grade ore that it owns in Minas Gerais state, Hanna has been harassed by a succession of political obstacles, is still battling a court decree annulling its mining rights. With the Brazilian economy as well as the climate for foreign investment improving (see THE HEMISPHERE), Hanna last week decided to switch its strategy and merge its trove of ore into a new Brazilian-dominated combine.

The new company, called M.B.R. (for Mineracaoes Brasileiras Reunidas), joins Hanna's St. John d'el Rey Mining Co. (which will have 49% control) to the iron-and manganese-ore properties of Brazilian Industrialist Augusto Antunes (51% control). Potentially the world's largest iron-ore company, M.B.R. plans to build a $60 million deep-water pier, an ore yard, a railroad link (and perhaps a pelletizing plant) on Sepetiba Bay, 60 miles south of the traffic-clogged port of Rio de Janeiro; it expects to step up exports from 2,000,000 to 10 million tons a year by 1970. The deal, said Antunes last week, "is a Brazilian solution to a national problem."

Antunes, 59, one of Brazil's most enlightened businessmen, already provides his country with the means to unlock much of its long-neglected wealth in natural resources, and so reduce its heavy dependence on coffee for export income. In a similar 51%-49% joint venture with Bethlehem Steel, he has not only built one of the world's most successful manganese mining operations, but has managed to avoid the attacks that Brazilian nationalists have made on other foreign interests. By pushing iron-ore exports, Antunes expects Brazil in time to earn enough abroad to import coal, and so become one of the world's major producers of steel.

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