{"id":81770,"date":"2026-07-13T01:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T01:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/81770\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T01:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T01:30:17","slug":"rio-tinto-may-need-to-bulk-up-its-copper-pipeline-swiss-bank-says-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/81770\/","title":{"rendered":"Rio Tinto may need to bulk up its copper pipeline, Swiss bank says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rio<\/a> Rio Tinto may need to bulk up its copper pipeline, Swiss bank says Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock <\/p>\n

UBS says Rio Tinto Ltd (LSE:RIO, ASX:RIO, OTC:RTNTF)<\/a> may need to bulk up its copper pipeline if it is to avoid a growth gap after 2030, with Argentina’s Los Azules project emerging as a possible answer. <\/p>\n

The bank, which rates Rio at Neutral, with a 7,300p price target, said the miner is on track to lift copper output from 883,000 tonnes in 2025 to around 1 million tonnes by 2030, helped by Oyu Tolgoi and Kennecott. <\/p>\n

Beyond that, UBS sees fewer clear options. It said Rio “does however lack meaningful copper growth optionality medium-term 2030-35”, with Resolution, La Granja and Nuevo Cobre longer-dated and Winu relatively small. <\/p>\n

Los Azules could help fill the hole. Rio already owns 17% of the Argentina copper project, and was reported in May to be considering increasing its stake. <\/p>\n

UBS described Los Azules as a long-life, low-cost SXEW operation targeting first copper in 2030. The 2025 feasibility study points to 205,000 tonnes of annual cathode output in the first five years, US$1.71\/lb C1 costs, US$2.11\/lb AISC and roughly US$3bn of capex. <\/p>\n

At UBS’s long-term copper price of US$5.50\/lb, the bank estimates Los Azules could be worth around US$5bn, with an IRR of roughly 28%. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rio Tinto may need to bulk up its copper pipeline, Swiss bank says Proactive uses images sourced from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20718],"tags":[21220,36105,23444,21022,21078,12991,22028],"class_list":["post-81770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rio-tinto","tag-copper-output","tag-copper-price","tag-los-azules","tag-oyu-tolgoi","tag-rio","tag-rio-tinto","tag-swiss-bank"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116910084811711459","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}