Rio Tinto Says It Has Best Exploration Pipeline in Years — Commodity Comment
By Rhiannon Hoyle
Rio Tinto, the world's second-biggest miner by market value, on Wednesday reported a 19% fall in annual net profit as prices for some commodities including aluminum weakened. Here are some remarks from the company's 2023 final report.
On projects:
"We advanced a number of projects, including making significant progress at the Simandou iron ore project in Guinea, in collaboration with our joint venture partners. We achieved first sustainable production at the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in Mongolia, which remains on track to ramp up to 500,000 [metric tons] of copper per year from 2028 to 2036.
In our aluminum business, we are investing in a significant AP60 expansion and gradually closing our Arvida smelter, in operation since 1926. We also acquired a 50% equity stake in Matalco from Giampaolo Group for $738 million to become a leader in recycled aluminum supply in North America.
We are making real progress in shaping our portfolio for the future, with new technology developments and one of the most exciting exploration pipelines for many years."
On exploration:
"We have a strong portfolio of greenfield exploration projects in early exploration and studies stages, with activity in 18 countries across eight commodities. The bulk of this expenditure in 2023 focused on copper in Australia, Chile, Colombia, Namibia, the United States and Zambia; diamonds in Canada; nickel in Brazil, Canada and Peru; heavy mineral sands in South Africa; and potash in Canada.
We recently partnered with Codelco on the Nuevo Cobre copper project in the prospective Atacama region in Chile and with Charger Metals on the Lake Johnston lithium project in the Yilgarn, Western Australia."
On costs:
"We remain focused on cost control, in particular maintaining discipline on fixed costs, which are expected to be broadly flat in 2024. While inflation has eased, we continued to see lag effects in its impact on our third party costs, such as contractor rates, consumables and some raw materials; we expect this to stabilize in 2024."
Write to Rhiannon Hoyle at rhiannon.hoyle@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 21, 2024 03:33 ET (08:33 GMT)
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