Rio Tinto Will Take 'Serious Look' at Critical Minerals It Can Supply
By Rhiannon Hoyle
PERTH, Australia--Rio Tinto will take a hard look at how it can help supply more rare earths and other minerals essential to military and manufacturing needs, as Western governments scramble to break China's grip on global markets.
In recent board meetings, directors have discussed how the Anglo-Australian miner might extract more critical minerals, such as rare earths, from its large mining operations worldwide, said Chief Executive Jakob Stausholm.
Concerns about China's dominance in global supply chains have intensified amid the U.S.-China trade war, which has included Beijing imposing export controls on some rare earths and magnets in response to new U.S. tariffs.
"The world has changed," Stausholm said after an annual shareholder meeting in Australia on Thursday.
President Trump is pushing to secure mineral rights globally to shore up supplies of materials critical to U.S. military and industrial strength. Currently, China is responsible for about 85% of global rare-earth refining.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration reached a deal with Ukraine granting the U.S. access to its mineral resources, which include reserves of rare earths, lithium and titanium.
"There's no doubt we have many opportunities" in critical minerals, Stausholm said of Rio Tinto. "We will have a serious look at it."
Those opportunities may not require building new mines, but could involve extracting overlooked minerals from existing operations that primarily produce copper and other commodities suited to large-scale production.
"It's very often that we actually have it in what we are mining," said Stausholm.
In recent years, Rio Tinto built a plant at its Kennecott copper operation in Utah to produce tellurium, a critical mineral used in solar panels. China, the dominant supplier, introduced export controls on tellurium earlier this year.
The miner has also invested in scandium, a rare earth element used to strengthen aluminum.
Stausholm said Rio Tinto would want to ensure there are buyers before expanding into smaller markets.
"To justify a new plant to extract whatever rare earth is, you need to be sure that there are some customers to buy--whether it's governments or it's private enterprises," he said. "You need to have that in order to take such investment decisions, because [in] these rare earths, there is not a liquid spot market," Stausholm added.
Chairman Dominic Barton said that helping countries diversify their supply sources could help build goodwill with governments and communities.
Rio Tinto, which operates some of the world's biggest iron ore, aluminum and copper operations, has faced opposition in recent years to projects including a proposed copper mine in Arizona and a lithium development in Serbia.
"We [can] see if the economics work, and that might help us with, in a sense, a social license, if you will," Barton said.
Write to Rhiannon Hoyle at rhiannon.hoyle@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
05-01-25 0615ET
