Rio Tinto provides update on long-term strategy at investor seminar

Rio Tinto is providing an update at its investor seminar on progress against its long-term strategy. Updates will include Rio Tinto’s market outlook, with the energy transition expected to add as much as 25% in new demand above traditional sources on a copper equivalent basis across the Group’s key products by 2035. Rio Tinto is targeting investment of up to $3B per year in growth to meet this demand, including the Oyu Tolgoi copper, Rincon lithium and Simandou iron ore projects. There are now 30 deployments of the Rio Tinto Safe Production System, or SPS, across 16 sites. Roll-outs are delivering benefits such as up to 5M tons of production uplift expected at the Group’s Pilbara iron ore assets in 2023. Executives will outline projects underway to meet challenging decarbonization targets to halve Scope 1 & 2 emissions by 2030, on the road to net zero by 2050. Six large emissions abatement programmes are focused on renewable power, process heat, diesel and the ELYSIS zero carbon aluminium smelting technology to drive the transition to net zero by 2050, supported by high-quality nature based solutions. Investments of around $7.5B are expected between 2022 and 2030, including around $1.5B over the next three years which will be back-end dated. Investments are being prioritized and phased in the most logical way, with consideration for near-term work around energy inputs and attractive economics. New long-term power contracts will also be required for the aluminium business to meet targets. Incremental operating expenditure on building new teams and energy efficiency initiatives remains around $200M per year, in addition to research and development investment.