Company: RTNTF
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001628280-25-006642
Chunk: 223

Company: RIO TINTO LTD
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 20-F
Chunk 223
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’ Remuneration report. Nothing is more important than the health, safety and wellbeing of our people. We tragically lost 5 colleagues in 2024. In January, 4 colleagues and 2 employees of the contractor’s airline crew died in a plane crash en route to our Diavik mine. In October, an employee of one of our contractors was injured at the SimFer Port Project and subsequently passed away. We are also deeply concerned about a crew member aboard a Rio Tinto bulk carrier who was reported missing in December. These events have all had a devastating impact and learnings from these tragic events will be used to inform ongoing improvements to safety practices to prevent such incidents in the future. Operational performance and our balance sheet remained robust in 2024, allowing US $6.5 billion to be declared as dividends to shareholders. This underpinned our ability to reach an agreement in October for the proposed acquisition of Arcadium Lithium in an all-cash deal. Subject to completion, this transaction will give us the platform to create a world-class lithium business. We expect the deal to close in March 2025. Our operational performance in 2024 has been facilitated by progress in deploying our Safe Production System (SPS). SPS deployment has commenced at 31 (81%) of our sites and underlines our commitment to become Best Operator with improved safety and operational performance across our global assets. During the year, we also progressed against our other objectives - striving for impeccable environment, social and governance (ESG) credentials, excelling in development and strengthening our social licence. Our commitment to decarbonise our business, and to develop products and services to help our customers decarbonise, continues at pace. 2024 was a record year for investment approvals towards our 2030 target, underwritten by significant progress in repowering our Gladstone assets. We signed 2 power purchase agreements for a combined 2.2GW of renewable energy, catalysing the development of new large-scale renewable energy in Queensland. We also reached an agreement with the Queensland Government on a support package to assist Boyne Smelters Limited (BSL) with the transition to a competitive and repowered future. In June, we announced the installation of carbon-free aluminium smelting cells in Quebec to support the ongoing development of the ELYSIS™ technology, with the first production of aluminium without direct greenhouse gas emissions targeted by 2027. We entered into a joint venture with Aymium to manufacture renewable metallurgical bioc