Rio Tinto Group
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Rio Tinto | |
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| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1873 |
| Headquarters |  London &  Melbourne |
| Key people | Paul Skinner, Chairman R. Leigh Clifford, CEO Guy Elliot, Finance Director |
| Industry | Mining |
| Products | Coal Iron Copper Uranium Gold Diamonds |
| Revenue | $11.344 billion (2004) |
| Employees | 32000 (2004) |
| Slogan | N/A |
| Website | www.riotinto.com |
Rio Tinto is a multinational mining and resources group founded originally in 1873. The group is one of the world's largest mining companies, with a pre-tax profit of approximately 3.6 billion US dollars in 2004 on consolidated turnover of 14.1 billion USD.
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[edit] Diamonds
- See also: Diamonds as an investment
The company's diamond operations are best known for the pink diamonds produced at the Argyle diamond mine in Western Australia, which produces over 90% of the world's supply of these gems and around 30% of the world's annual production of all natural diamonds. The company also owns 60% of and manages the Diavik Diamond Mine in Canada's Northwest Territories, and the Murowa diamond mine in Zimbabwe.
[edit] Copper
The copper division not only produces copper itself, but a considerable quantity of gold from its mines in Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Chile, and the United States, some as part of joint ventures. The group owns Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation. The copper group was responsible for 23% of turnover (of which 55% was copper and most of the remainder gold) and 32% of profits in 2003.
[edit] Technology
The company also has a technology group conducting research and development, notably including the HIsmelt iron smelting process, and an exploration group.
[edit] Criticisms
Environmental, political, safety and labour rights concerns have been raised against Rio Tinto by both environmental groups and unions, in particular the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). The CFMEU ran a campaign against the company which tried to de-unionise its workforce after the introduction of the Howard Government's Workplace Relations Act 1996.
Another has been Rio Tinto's involvement in Papua New Guinea which triggered the Bougainville separatist crisis. See Lea, David (1999) Corporate and Public Responsibility, Stakeholder Theory and the Developing World, Business Ethics: A European Review, 8 (3): 151-162. While RTZ has put a lot of energy into cleaning up its tainted human-right image from the aftermath of crisises like the above, many critics feel the company has not substantially changed [1]. For example, on October of 2006 Rio Tinto and Ascendant Copper Corporation announced a joint exploration program for exploring copper in western Ecuador, this in spite of the serious human-rights violations filed against Ascendant Copper, and the widespread community opposition to its Junin copper project.
Rio Tinto has also won an award for ethicial behaviour, the Worldaware Award for Sustainable development. However, although this award was decided by an independent committee, it was, like some other WorldAware Awards, sponsored by another multinational corporation (in this case, the sponsor was Tate and Lyle). Rio Tinto has, in turn, sponsored their own WorldAware award - the Rio Tinto Award for Long-term Commitment, which was awarded to a variety of local and multinational players including in 1999 to Shell Pakistan.
