Johannesburg - Resources giant Rio Tinto on Thursday reported a recovery across most of its key commodities but said it was still cautious on the state of the global economy going into 2010 as stimulus packages start to wind down.
Releasing its fourth quarter 2009 operations review, Rio Tinto's CEO Tom Albanese said this was another very strong quarter for iron ore production, driven by continuing high demand from China.
In the Pilbara the company achieved record sales for both the quarter and the full year and both global and Pilbara production set new records in 2009.
"We made good progress in divestments with $1.85bn of sales completed in the fourth quarter and have now agreed sales of $10.3bn since we began the divestment programme in 2008," said Albanese.
The divestments were needed to reduce the miner's sizeable debt incurred through the purchase of Alcan.
At 47.2 million tonnes for the quarter, Rio Tinto's global iron ore production was up 49% on the same quarter the year before when the company reported production 31.8 million tonnes.
Global iron ore sales set a new quarterly record of 61 million tonnes and Rio Tinto's global iron ore production in 2009 exceeded 217 million tonnes, or 172 million tonnes on an attributable basis - a 13 % increase on 2008, and also a new record.
The miner expects its iron ore joint venture with BHP Billiton [JSE:BIL] in the Pilbara to be complete in the second half of this calendar year.
This is after the companies signed binding agreements on the proposed iron ore production joint venture that cover all aspects of how the joint venture will operate and be governed in December last year.
Mined copper production at 203 300 tonnes was up 36% on the fourth quarter of 2008 with higher production at all operations, notably at Escondida and Grasberg.
Refined copper production at 105 500 was up 15% on the fourth quarter of 2008 following higher concentrate grades and a further improvement in performance at Kennecott Utah Copper.
Full year mined copper production of 804 700 tonnes was up 15% year-on-year and refined copper production reached 412 400 tonnes in 2009, 28% up on 2008's output.
Mined gold production exceeded 1.1 million ounces in 2009, 141% above 2008, attributable to higher grades at Kennecott Utah Copper and Grasberg.
But production cutbacks maintained in the aluminium group in response to market conditions led to a 3% dip in quarterly and a 4% drop in annual aluminum production.
The miner produced 957 000 tonnes of aluminium in the fourth quarter and 3.8 million tonnes for the full year.
Hard coking coal production at 2.1 million tonnes was down 2% in the four quarter and flat at 7.5 million tonnes for the full year.
Australian thermal coal production was up 5% both in the quarter and for the full year while its coal production in the US fell 50% during the quarter and was 16% lower on the year.
Uranium production was down 20% on the fourth quarter of 2008 due to lower grades at ERA but 2009 full year uranium production was consistent with the prior year.
Diamond production dived 35% to 4.5 million carats during the quarter and 33% for the year with production coming in at 14 million carats for the full year.
- I-Net Bridge