Thanks.
Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee and fellow witnesses.
My name is Nigel Steward and I am the head of group technical for processing for Rio Tinto worldwide.
Rio Tinto is the second-largest mining company in the world and the largest mining company in Canada, with operations coast to coast to coast, from our world-class aluminum operations in Kitimat in British Columbia and in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint Jean region, to our Diavik Diamond Mine in the Northwest Territories, to our iron ore operations in Labrador. We have a truly national footprint, with exploration activities across the country.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss the important topic of critical minerals with you today. As Pierre Gratton pointed out in his earlier testimony to the committee, Canada's mining and manufacturing sector will be critical to achieving the federal government's 2030 climate change goals and the transition to a zero-carbon future by 2050.
Rio Tinto has climate targets for 2030 in line with the Paris Agreement, and our goal is to reach net-zero emissions in our operations by 2050. We don't know what that path to 2050 looks like yet, but we know it will and must include a secure supply of critical minerals, be they battery metals such as lithium, cobalt and copper, or rare earth metals like scandium or other critical elements like gallium.
Today I would like to focus my remarks on what Rio Tinto likes to call “full-value mining”.
When we think of mining, we immediately think of primary mining or greenfield plays, but increasingly we are discovering that many of the critical minerals we need to facilitate this clean transition can and are being found in existing mining operations, in waste streams and mine tailings. Full-value mining is all about extracting as much value as possible from the ore bodies that we mine.
In our aluminum operations in Quebec, for example, we have invested many years of R and D to create a new process that basically separates out our residues into their component parts. We have been able to monetize what would have been deemed waste in the past, so that there is both an economic and an environmental benefit. Today, in our aluminum business in Quebec, 85% of the 400,000 tonnes of waste is now fully recovered in the form of multiple products that are sent to customers.
Another great example of full-value mining is what we've been able to do with our Rio Tinto Fer et Titane metallurgical facility in Sorel-Tracy, in Quebec, which extracts high-quality titanium dioxide feedstock, iron, steel and metal powders all from ilmenite. Using our processing know-how and R and D capabilities, we have figured out a way to extract scandium, one of the rarest critical minerals. We do this from our waste streams.
In January we announced that Rio Tinto would become the first producer of high-quality scandium oxide in North America, with the construction of a new commercial-scale demonstration plant.
Scandium provides us with an alloying element for aluminum. It creates new possibilities for scandium-aluminum alloyed products in applications like aerospace and defence, because scandium is unique. It's one of the few elements that increases both the strength and toughness of aluminum alloys.
Rio Tinto is investing $6 million in the construction of a first module in the plant, with an initial capacity to produce three tonnes of scandium oxide per year, or approximately 20% of the current global market.
Those are just two Canadian examples of how we are pushing the boundaries of traditional mining to extract the full value from the mineral stream. We have other examples in the U.S. as well, including a pilot project at our boron mine in California that will extract lithium from a waste stream there.
At the end of the day we need steel, aluminum, copper, cobalt and titanium. All of these elements are necessary for our collective growth and well-being. As miners, our job is not only to find these minerals but to extract them in as sustainable a way as possible. It is this desire, along with the recognition that we cannot address the challenge of climate change without minerals and metals, that pushes us more and more towards full-value mining with the lowest environmental and carbon footprint possible.
Many thanks for your attention, and I am happy to take any questions you may have.