Rio Tinto Annual Report 2022
For 150 years, we have been striving to find better ways - in how we face
challenges, find solutions, celebrate our successes, and learn from our failures.
Our strength and scale reflect the courage shown by past generations, and the
curiosity of our current employees, who continue to shape important partnerships
with companies, communities, and countries - constantly evolving our business
and our products to support the world around us.
We have marked a wide range of milestones through our 150 years of operation;
these are a few of the moments that shaped the Rio Tinto of today.
150 years of Rio Tinto
4
1873
Rio Tinto commences
copper mining in Spain
The Rio Tinto Company was registered in
London after a British-European investor
group bought the Rio Tinto mines in Spain,
first mined in Phoenician and Roman times.
We introduced new processing facilities and
techniques that transformed the operation,
and by the turn of the century, we were
producing 10% of the world's copper.
2007
Becoming a global leader
in aluminium
We acquired Alcan, becoming a global
leader in aluminium, and further diversifying
our portfolio. Through this deal, we also
obtained access to water rights and
renewable power through a vast network
of hydropower facilities in Canada, a
major competitive advantage to our
smelting business. While Alcan was
clearly a leader in green aluminium, the
acquisition resulted in an unsustainable
level of debt when the global financial
crisis happened and left the company
in a vulnerable financial situation.
Annual Report 2022 | riotinto.com
1929-1953
Exploring new lands
We looked beyond Spain's borders for growth
opportunities, setting up a series of joint ventures
to explore and develop mines, starting in 1929
with the great copper belt of what is now known
as Zambia. Come 1952, our exploration team
expanded into South Africa and Canada, and the
following year Australia, resulting in new uranium
mines in Canada and Australia.
1955-1963
The red cliffs of Australia
In 1955, a geologist discovered bauxite
in Queensland and commercial bauxite
mining began at Weipa in 1963, where we
still mine today.
2000-2022
Shaping our portfolio
At the turn of the new century, we embarked on an acquisition and
divestment programme, which simplified the business, focused the Group
on large, low-cost mines and culminated in our divestment of our coal
assets in 2018. We became the first major miner to cease coal production.
We acquired North Ltd in 2000, significantly expanding our iron ore assets,
including mines, rail and port capacity. And in 2006, we partnered with
Ivanhoe Mines to construct and operate Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia. In 2022,
we acquired full ownership of Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd, increasing our
direct ownership in Oyu Tolgoi to 66%.
2008-2019
Technology redefines the business
In an attempt to transform the efficiency and safety of the way we mine,
we partnered with Komatsu to be among the first in the world to trial the world's
first driverless haul trucks. This initiative set us on a path to become a global
leader in fully integrated, automated mining. In 2019, together with our partner
Hitachi, we launched the world's first fully autonomous, long-distance,
heavy-haul rail network - AutoHaul™.View entire presentation