Overview of Rio Tinto (Background)
Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group headquartered in the UK (United Kingdom), combining Rio Tinto plc, a London public listed company, and Rio Tinto Limited, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. These two companies were founded in 1873 and 1903 respectively. The original Rio Tinto company was set up by a group of investors including Matheson & Co. and Duetsches Bank, who together bought Rio Tinto mine from the Spainish government for $3.7 million in the early 1870’s. By the end of the 1880’s Rio Tinto was known as the world’s leading copper producer.
In 1963 the Rio Tinto company merged with the Consolidated Zinc Corporation to form RTZ (initially Conzinc Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation) and Australian subsidiary CRA (initially Conzinc Rio Tinto of Australian Limited). This allowed Rio Tinto grow significantly and expand widely. Between 1962 and 1968 the two groups discovered and began operating numerous mines. Those mines produced products such aluminum, copper, diamonds, energy (coal and uranium), gold, industrial minerals (borates, titanium dioxide, salt, talc), and iron core.
With company expanding into such many products, this saw it growing and being located in six continents. Continents such as Europe, South America, Asia, Southern Africa, Australia and North America. The group also acquired the Rossing Uranium mine, Bongaville Copper mine as well as small companies. Such growth saw the company being the largest in its industry, with the revenue growth of more than $14.7 million with the budget year. Even after 130 years Rio Tinto is still the second largest mining company in the world, the production of 10 tons of copper, zinc and 7.5 tons of other minerals.
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...e public stock exchange, then joint forces to start opening other mines in the world. Mines that produced coal, uranium, diamonds, gold, copper and zinc. Throughout the years of its growth Rio Tinto has maintain a good reputation among the authorities and governments.
Rio Tinto has not only been a mining company but an investor to small and coming business that would help it to gain a competitive advantage to the mining industry. It has mostly invested in companies that specialized in innovation and technology.
This innovation and technology is set to enhance productivity, as well as communication for miners under the ground. Not only Rio Tinto is looking to gain any profit without involving other stakeholders (communities). It has introduced program that are set to benefits the communities around their mines, the project is called working with our neighbours
For example, gold mines could be found in places like Macedonia while copper mines could found on the islands of Delos or Eretria. Also, it is important to note that bronze is a mix of tin and copper so it can not be mined directly from the earth. These metals were primarily used for the production of arms and currency during this time period. These metals were often found through underground mining, also known as deep vein mining. This type of mining was tedious and could only be done through excavation and tunnel building. These tunnels eventually emptied into galleries where ore was obtained, washed and melted. There was often a “relay of miners carrying ore out on their shoulders” while other times wheeled carts were used. Another type of mining was surface mining where ore surfaced in streams or on the ground and collected. An example of surface mining is placer deposits where streams broke up the ore and the dense pieces would settle at the bottom. The Greeks were very intelligent and could tell the “affinity for one type of metal for another” or would follow the placer deposits to the source. Because of the presence of water previously, sometimes the mine was forced to be abandoned because of the lack of control of the water. The Romans attempted to counteract this by digging drainage adits to divert water and filtering the water by percolation. Slaves would often carry the water away with
In the 79 years the mines were open 1.7 million metric tons (3.75 billion pounds) of lead and 8.8 million metric tons (19.4 billion pounds) of zinc were withdrawn from the mine (2). The entire area around Tar Creek is known as the tri-state mining area. This tri-state area is a massive source of metals. This area accounted for 35% of the worldwide metal market for a decade. It also provided the majority of metals the United States used in World wars I and II (3).
For the past 112 years, De Beers has dominated the diamond industry. Established in April 1880 by Cecil John Rhodes and his partner, Charles Dunell Rudd, De Beers rose to prominence, merging with Barney Barnato’s Kimberley Central Mining company and acquiring more and more mines (Hauser, 2002). The ...
Peter Munk, the founder of American Barrick had after experience and past failures come to the belief that high liquidity and low leverage were key tenets in a successful business. The increased flexibility obtained by following these guidelines should provide the company with opportunities that less hedged companies did not have. If gold prices were to fall then the company would not be affected by the distress costs that other competing companies would experience, giving the company an edge during times of low prices. During this time they would have additional cash reserves available to invest while other companies might be struggling to gain expensive debt financing. This is one of the major competitive advantages a gold company can have because the major costs in this industry is exploration and acquisition costs. Because of their strong financials and stability the company was also more likely to enter into more favorable contracts. The risk management program was meant to provide in...
In 1867, huge diamond deposits were accidently discovered near the Orange River in South Africa. Cecil John Rhodes arrived at Kimberley Mine in 1874 and eventually began purchasing claims in the surrounding mines. Rhodes established DeBeers Consolidated Mines in 1888 to manage his assets. DeBeers allowed Rhodes and other suppliers to control the all-inclusive supply of diamonds by setting high market prices and regulating the output of diamonds into the market (Spar, 2006: 197). Ernest Oppenheimer gained control of DeBeers in 1929, after the death of Rhodes in 1902. The Central Selling Organisation...
This company has come a long way into the sustainable and triple bottom line world. “Four wind turbines were erected in 2013 to reduce the use of diesel fuel, which had to be trucked in on a 550-km ice road at a cost of $70 million a year” (Hamilton, 2016). Wind turbines are put into place to create electricity through the spinning of the propellers. Mines are underground therefore it is extremely crucial to have electricity through renewable energy to create light for the miners underground because of the darkness being created. More importantly, if every corporation were to include the triple bottom line in their business goals, it would aid with climate change and global
In the neighboring colonial city of Chuquisaca’s oligarchy were able to maintain the city’s economic and political hegemony in the haciendas however following the collapse of the silver mining industry in Potosi, the system changed drastically. From having a silver mining dependent economy to having a greater dependency on the agricultural sector of the cities economics . During the 19th century, Bolivia under the leadership of Antonio Jose de Sucre opened up the countries mines to investors from Europe and allowed them to purchase mines that they had abandoned during the revolution. Furthermore, in 1825, in an attempt to stimulate the mining industry in Bolivia, the government began making reforms to the mines in Potosi to increase the cities mines productivity and profits. However, in 1826, the process of reforming and stimulating the mining industry in Bolivia failed due to mismanagement of foreign investors in London and the mines were forced to close . Although in the 19th century, the mining industry of Bolivia collapsed, later in the 20th century the mining industry of Bolivia, resurged with the mining of other minerals besides silver such as tin, lead and zinc . As a result of the event such as the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay the country had a great need to control national resources so as to pay its debts to
Though it has had many negative impacts on the environment in the past, mining is a vital industry completely necessary to our economy and lives. Nearly every item we use or encounter in our day to day lives is mined or contains mined products. Without the excavation of such materials things like computers, televisions, large building structures, electricity, and cars would not be possible. Virtually every technological and medical advance uses minded materials, without which millions would suffer. Some examples of minerals in the home include the telephone which is made from as many as 42 different minerals, including aluminum, beryllium, coal, copper, gold, iron, silver, and talc. A television requires over 35 different minerals, and more than 30 minerals are needed to make a single personal computer. Without boron, copper, gold and quartz, your digital alarm clock would not work. Every American uses an average 47,000 pounds of newly mined materials each year, which is higher than all other countries with the exception of Japan, which is a staggering figure representative of our dependence and need for mined minerals. Coal makes up more than half of nation’s electricity, and will continue to be the largest electrical supplier into 2020 & accounting for some 95 percent of the nation's fossil energy reserves – nine of every ten short-tons of coal mined in the United States is used for electricity generation. As the population of the world grows more mineral resources must be exploited through mining in order to support the rising demand for such products. Though it may present a hazard to the environment and those physically located nears the mines, the materials extracted from mines...
• Tata Steel is one of only a handful few steel organizations on the planet that is Economic Value Added (EVA)
at ArcelorMittal, reveals, “Essentially, the foundation of our Transformation strategy is to address the social, environmental and economic challenges facing both the country and the industry at large. It is critical that we support the downstream Steel Industry and, where possible, remove any barriers to their success. One way to do this is to favourably impact the preferential procurement scorecard of those procuring from us, by continuously improving our B-BBEE score. Furthermore, a focus is placed on increasing ‘Black’ participation within the industry, thus, effectively breaking down the Barriers of Entry for ‘new entrants’ to the market.”
Synergy. (2013, July 19). Resettlement Action Plan Developed for Anglo American Platinum, Twickenham mine. Retrieved April 20, 2014, from Anglo American Platinum: www.angloamerican.com
However not many people are aware of the fact that ever since diamonds were found in Kimberly, South Africa, the industry of distributing and selling this precious gem has been predominantly run by a single cartel. The “De Beers Mining Company”. A cartel is defined as “an international syndicate, formed esp. to control prices and output in some field of business” (The Free Dictionary 2009) and “De Beers” fits this definition very well. Over the past 120 years, they have been instrumental in controlling the price of diamonds.
The indirect impact of the mining industry has been huge in terms of funding for things like skill development through education and training, there is also provision made for social services in the mines (e.g. health care for the employees of the mines and their families, housing, school etc.) and the contribution the national economy.
Warhurst, A. (1999). Mining and the environment: case studies from the Americas. Ottawa, ON, Canada: International Development Research Centre.
Mining is the process or industry of obtaining minerals from the earth. Topics in this paper I’ll be specifically discussing are pros and cons of mining, structures of a mine, mining in general, California gold rush, diamonds in Africa, and comparison of diamond and gold mines.