Australian mining company Rio Tinto has released its operations review for the second quarter of 2008.
Accordingly, in the second quarter of 2008 Rio Tinto registered a 13 percent increase in its global production of iron ore to 42 million mt, compared to the second quarter of 2007.
Despite a major gas outage hitting the Pilbara mining region in Western Australia, Rio Tinto's Pilbara operations registered record quarterly iron ore production, up 14 percent to 39.5 million mt compared with the corresponding quarter of 2007, as the iron ore operations continue to expand their capacity.
Meanwhile, iron ore production at Rio Tinto's Iron Ore Company of Canada increased by 59 percent to 2.4 million mt compared with the same quarter last year.
Recovering well from the heavy rainfall experienced in the first quarter of 2008, during the second quarter Rio Tinto registered a 25 percent increase year on year in its Australian coking coal production to two million mt.
During the period in question Rio Tinto continued to sell iron ore on the spot market, and remains on track to meet its total spot sales target of up to 15 million mt for 2008.
Moreover, Rio Tinto negotiated record benchmark pricing levels with Asian customers for its iron ore production for 2008 contract shipments from Pilbara, namely a 96.5 percent increase for lump ore and a 79.88 percent rise for fine ore, representing an 85.7 percent weighted average increase.
In line with its expansion to a total capacity of 320 million mt per year, during the second quarter of 2008 Rio Tinto approved a number of significant capital projects amounting to a total investment of $1.54 billion, with Rio Tinto's share in this total equaling $1.24 billion.