Procurement Professional is the official publication of CIPS Australasia

Rio Tinto CEO comfortable with tax, eastern seaboard supply chain

11 Aug 2010

Source: CME Markets

Global mining giant Rio Tinto has enough comfort from the recently negotiated tax on mining companies by the Australian government to push ahead with investments in the country, chief executive Tom Albanese said in comments broadcast earlier this week.

 "It's not perfect, but I would say it's something that allows Rio Tinto to make the investments that we want to make in Australia," Albanese told the Sky Business channel's "Sunday Business" television program.

 "That's all we can expect, and that's all we're concerned with. We want to have the ability to continue to invest in Australia," Albanese said. Rio Tinto said earlier this week that it will invest a further US$790 million to expand iron ore capacity at its Pilbara operations in the West Australia state. The Anglo-Australian miner has approved a total of US$1 billion in recent weeks to fund the last phase of a multi-tier expansion project which centers around boosting Rio Tinto's Cape Lambert port handling capacity to 180million metric tons by 2016 from the current 80 million tons.

London-based Rio Tinto will also look to boost its coal capacity in Australia. "As we see the supply chain constraints in Eastern Australia continue to unwind in New South Wales and Queensland, we want to be there, ramping up our coal production for those future coal markets," Mr Albanese said.

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