Rio Tinto sustains strong performance in bauxite

Rio Tinto releases strong third quarter production results despite the bearish situation in the commodity market.
Rio Tinto chief executive Sam Walsh said “We continue to deliver efficient production, rigorous cost control and sound allocation of capital. This approach is ensuring that our tier one assets generate substantial free cash flow even during a challenging economic environment. Our expanded Pilbara infrastructure is in place, and the Iron Ore Product Group is successfully commissioning and testing the system, reflected in the increased iron ore shipments to our customers during the period. Our cash generated from operations will enable us to deliver strong returns to shareholders through the cycle and our balance sheet will be further strengthened by recent divestment activity.”

Rio Tinto sustained strong performance in bauxite with third party shipments reaching close to 20 million tonnes to date this year following record production at Weipa.

The strong performance in bauxite was sustained into the third quarter, driven by record quarterly and nine month production at Weipa, which gave rise to a nine month record for the Group.

Weipa benefited from increased plant throughput while Gove continued to ramp up its export capability, running at just under an eight million tonne run-rate in the third quarter of 2015.

Third quarter and year to date bauxite production was four per cent higher than the corresponding periods of 2014 and enabled the group to ship close to 20 million tonnes to third parties in the first nine months of 2015, a 19 per cent improvement on the same period of 2014.

Alumina production for the first nine months of 2015 was up by five per cent compared with the same period of 2014 (excluding production from the Gove refinery which was curtailed in May 2014), reflecting improved productivity at Queensland Alumina and Yarwun.