Rio Tinto sees inflation with costs up and tonnes down as iron ore price scales record heights
Mining
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Is inflation coming to hit the hip pockets of Australia’s big iron ore miners?
For years the big players have used cost discipline (and arguably advantageous bargaining positions when it comes to wages after culling thousands of jobs in the downturn) to keep their iron ore empires ticking along, with costs in the mid-teens for each tonne of ore mined.
Now they are benefitting from a period of historic prices, you can probably expect that to tick up.
Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) has flagged an extra $300 million of costs from its Pilbara iron ore operations related to higher labour and diesel costs and changes to its mine heritage management following the Juukan Gorge debacle.