Brazilian miner and iron ore producer Vale is using WeChat to sell iron ore in China, according to a media report by Reuters.
The company’s WeChat iron ore sales initiative was launched in China on April 23 and has completed so far eight transactions for a total of 71,000 mt of the product, known as Brazilian Blend Fines (BRBR).
Additionally, Vale also sold on August 4 over 300,000 mt of iron ore in just a single blockchain transaction. The company didn’t disclose the total sales volumes so far using blockchain, but those exceed 300,000 mt.
Vale expects such transactions using WeChat and blockchain to increase over the next five years. “We didn’t set a specific sales volume goal for (our) WeChat Mini (iron ore sales program) this year, but we expect an increased volume of transactions from 2022 onwards. And this is totally up to our clients’ decision,” Vale said.
The media report also noted Rio Tinto is also using WeChat for iron ore sales. WeChat has over 1 billion users.