The man responsible for giving the dry bulk industry the valemax died on the weekend in a plane crash.
Roger Agnelli, the Brazilian banker who turned Vale into the world’s No. 1 iron ore producer, died on Saturday. He was 56.
Agnelli, his wife and two children were among seven killed when his Comp Air 9 turboprop monoplane slammed into two homes around 3:20 p.m. local time, minutes after taking off from an airport in northern São Paulo, authorities said.
“We have lost a Brazilian of extraordinary entrepreneurial vision,” president Dilma Rousseff said in a statement Sunday.
During his 10-year tenure at Vale, Agnelli greenlighted a project that saw more than thirty 400,000 dwt VLOCs – dubbed valemaxes – built.
Ultimately, it was a gamble that did not pay off as intended – Chinese authorities blocking these giant bulkers from calling, but it was a move that has changed the face of Brazil-China iron ore trades.
