Company: RTNTF
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001628280-25-006642
Chunk: 57

Company: RIO TINTO LTD
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 20-F
Chunk 57
---
 in 2023, driven by continued operational improvements to meet increasing third-party and IOC demand. Our focus going forward is to stabilise the operation and achieve safe, cost-effective and consistent production. TiO 2 slag production of 990 thousand tonnes was 11% lower than 2023, primarily due to reduced market demand. A furnace reconstruction, starting in the first quarter of 2024, continues at our RTIT Quebec Operations. Through 2024, we operated six out of nine furnaces in Quebec and three out of four at Richards Bay Minerals (RBM). Borates production was 2% higher than 2023 supported by recovering market demand, and despite unplanned plant downtime in April 2024. Our share of carats recovered was 17% lower than 2023. Diamond production was impacted by the tragic plane crash earlier in 2024, as well as cessation of A21 open pit mining in the third quarter of 2023. First lithium was produced from the Rincon project starter plant in Argentina in November 2024. First commercial production is targeted for the first half of 2025.

| For more informationabout our capitalprojects and future growth options, seepages22-23. |

1. There is no overall financial impact to the Rio Tinto Group, with the offset reflected centrally. BlueSmelting’s game-changing potential In 2024, we continued developing BlueSmelting™, a groundbreaking ilmenite reduction technology. BlueSmelting has the potential to reduce up to 70% of the Rio Tinto Iron & Titanium (RTIT) Quebec Operations' global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, representing a decrease of approximately 670,000 tonnes of CO 2 equivalent compared to 2021 emissions. BlueSmelting™ technology creates the possibility of producing high-grade titanium dioxide feedstock, steel, and metal powders with a drastically reduced carbon footprint. The BlueSmelting process being demonstrated at RTIT Quebec Operations is a world-first technology, developed in-house, that adds a step before the traditional smelting process – pre-reduction – leading to an overall decrease in the site GHG emissions. It combines mature in-house technology, found in other processes used on-site, with new innovations. BlueSmelting uses fluid bed reactors to reduce the coal required for the traditional smelting process, meaning less coal and electricity are used to complete the ore reduction. The BlueSmelting demonstration plant – the largest of its kind in the