Operations
Rio Tinto's main business is the production of raw materials including copper, iron ore, coal, bauxite, diamonds, uranium, and industrial minerals including titanium dioxide, talc, salt, gypsum, and borates. Rio Tinto also performs processing on some of these materials, with plants dedicated to processing bauxite into alumina and aluminium, and smelting iron ore into iron. The company also produces other metals and minerals as byproducts from the processing of its main resources, including gold, silver, molybdenum, sulphuric acid, nickel, potash, lead, and zinc. Rio Tinto controls gross assets of $81 billion in value across the globe, with main concentrations in Australia (35%), Canada (34%), Europe (13%), and the United States (11%), and smaller holdings in Africa (3%), South America (3%), and Indonesia (1%).
Rio Tinto is a signatory participant of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.
| Product | Amount | World Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| Iron ore | 153,400 thousand tonnes | 2nd |
| Bauxite | 034,987 thousand tonnes | 1st |
| Alumina | 009,009 thousand tonnes | 2nd |
| Aluminium | 004,062 thousand tonnes | 2nd |
| Copper (mined) | 000,698.5 thousand tonnes | 4th |
| Copper (refined) | 000,321.6 thousand tonnes | N/A |
| Molybdenum | 000,010.6 thousand tonnes | 3rd |
| Gold | 000,000.013 thousand tonnes (460,000 ounces) | 7th |
| Diamonds | 000,000.004 thousand tonnes (20,816,000 carats) | 3rd |
| Coal | 160,300 thousand tonnes | N/A |
| Uranium | 000,006.441 thousand tonnes (14,200,000 pounds) | 3rd |
| Titanium Dioxide | 001,524 thousand tonnes | N/A, but at least 3rd |
| Borates | 000,610 thousand tonnes | 1st |
Read more about this topic: Rio Tinto Group
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)