Rio Tinto

RIO TINTOProducing metals and minerals that are essential to global development

RIO TINTOProducing metals and minerals that are essential to global development

You’d be forgiven for being surprised that the Rio Tinto Group is a British-Australian multinational. It’s name is not derived from either culture, but does

reflect its multinational nature. In fact, the company’s roots date back to 1873, when a consortium of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto river in the southwestern city of Huelva in Spain from the countries government.

Fast forward more than 140 years on, and the Group is headquartered in London, with a management office in Melbourne, Australia. Rio Tinto specialises in producing many commodities, and also has operations in refining, particularly for refining bauxite and iron ore.

RIO TINTO IN AUSTRALIA Rio Tinto has been part of Australian life for over a century. More than 200,000 Australians are shareholders in the

Group, while half of the company’s global assets are based there.

The company produces iron ore, coal, bauxite, alumina, aluminium, uranium, diamonds and salt from more than 30 operating sites and processing plants around the country. It has offices in Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane.

Rio Tinto Coal Australia is one of the country’s leading mining organisations with a highly successful record in developing and managing world-class coal operations.

It produces both thermal and coking coal from five operations including the Hunter Valley in New South Wales and Queensland’s Bowen Basin for international export. In Queensland, the company operates the Hail Creek and Kestrel mines. In New South Wales, Rio Tinto Coal Australia manages Coal & Allied’s operations at Mount Thorley Warkworth, Hunter Valley Operations and Bengalla.

IRON ORERio Tinto’s Pilbara operations in the west of the country include a world-class, integrated network of 15 iron ore mines, four port facilities, a 1,700 kilometre rail network and related infrastructure.

These are specifically designed to respond rapidly to changes in demand and are supported by an Operations Centre in Perth.

“We’re expanding our operations in the Pilbara to epic proportions while introducing next generation technologies to deliver greater efficiency, lower production costs and improved health, safety and environmental performance,” says Rio Tinto.

HIsmelt is Rio Tinto’s patented technology that is short for

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high-intensity smelting. It is the world’s first commercial direct smelting process. It produces premium quality pig iron directly from iron ore. The technology brings many advantages to the steelmaking industry, such as lower operating costs, lower capital intensity, lower environmental impact, and greater raw material and operational flexibility.

The Iron Ore operations are led by Andrew Harding, who was appointed Chief executive, Iron Ore in 2013.

Mr Harding joined Rio Tinto in 1992 and spent seven years in Rio Tinto Iron Ore. He has also held a range of positions in Technology & Innovation, Energy and Aluminium and was President and Chief executive officer of Kennecott Utah Copper.

Prior to his current role, Andrew spent three years as Chief

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executive, Copper, where he was responsible for a range of mines and projects including the development of the world-class Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in Mongolia.

MINESSince 1983, Rio Tinto has operated the Argyle diamond mine in the remote East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Since then it has become the world’s largest supplier of natural coloured diamonds, one of the world’s largest producers of rough diamonds, producing more than 800 million carats of rough diamonds.

Located in the hot, dry climate of northern Western Australia, Dampier Salt is a joint venture between Rio Tinto (68 per cent), Marubeni Corporation (22 per cent) and Sojitz (10 per cent), Dampier Salt Limited (DSL).

Uranium has been mined at Ranger mine for over 30 years.

Civiltest Pty Ltd Geotechnical Consultants has been in business for approximately 25 years, and employs a range of dedicated staff across their offi ces and NATA accredited Laboratories. The company provides civil engineering testing services for both small and large civil engineering projects.

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It is operated under the name Energy Resources of Australia Ltd and is the country’s largest continually-operating uranium mine. It is one of only three mines in the world to have produced in excess of 100,000 tonnes of uranium oxide.

TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATIONRio Tinto recognises the ever-increasing role technology has to play in the mining and minerals industry. “Improvements in technology can change the way that we look at mineral deposits, make our operations safer, help us manage costs and respond to environmental imperatives,” it states.

That’s why it established the Technology & Innovation (T&I) group, which is dedicated to creating sustainable value and competitive advantage by making improvements to the way the Rio Tinto operates.

Employing more than 600 people, T&I partners with

the business and external partners to provide technical insights into how Rio Tinto runs its operations and delivers its projects.

“To help us achieve our goals, we’re also working with some of the best minds in the world of academia, through partnerships with leading institutions such as the University of Sydney and Imperial College London,” says the Group,

Rio Tinto also works hard to come up with ways to improve environmental performance through more efficient ways of mining and processing. Part of this involves looking to create new, more highly-specialised, career options for its members of staff.

For 8 years, the Mine of the Future programme has been running with the sole aim of changing the face of mining with step change improvements in productivity and efficiency.

Rio Tinto is in the process of rolling out a number of technological advancements across its operations to meet the three key themes of the programme:

• Autonomy – to achieve massive efficiency in surface bulk mining• Recovery – to increase efficiency by sorting waste before it gets to process plants • Tunnelling – to access deep orebodies faster

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT“Focusing on sustainable development means we constantly challenge ourselves to do better, in every aspect of our business,” says Chief Executive Sam Walsh.

“While social, environmental and economic issues present challenges to Rio Tinto, we prefer to see them as source of opportunity and new value.”

Protecting the health, safety and wellbeing of employees, contractors, customers and host communities is of utmost importance to Rio Tinto. It works hard to minimise its impact on the environment, and ensure communities benefit from the value generated by its operations and will continue to do so.

Oliver Moy PublisherFor enquiries emailokm@aubusinesscoverage.com