Río Tinto Minera

Río Tinto Minera (RTM) was a Spanish company in the mining and industrial sector, whose activity was centred on the Riotinto-Nerva mining basin. Originally a subsidiary of the Explosivos Río Tinto (ERT) group, the company was active between 1978 and 1995, going through various economic difficulties. RTM ended up ceasing its operations due to its heavy debt and the crisis that the mining industry was going through in those years.

History

Creation and early days

The company was created in June 1978 as the successor to , following the departure of the Patiño group from its shareholding years earlier. Initially, RTM was 75% owned by the Spanish group Unión Explosivos Río Tinto (ERT) and 25% by the British Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation (RTZ), although the latter increased its shareholding to 49% during the period 1979-1980. RTZ was the heir to the historic Rio Tinto Company Limited, which had controlled the Rio Tinto mine complex between 1873 and 1954. With the creation of Rio Tinto Minera, the ERT group brought all the business lines in the mining basin (copper, gold, silver and pyrites) under the same management. Finding that the business was not producing the desired results, the company's management adopted an expansion strategy that included new exploration plans for the following years, a modernisation of the equipment used and an expansion of the mining work in the deposits. RTM's plants in the Rio Tinto basin and in the Chemical Park of Huelva were also expanded.

Rio Tinto Minera, which controlled 27% of SECEM's capital, was one of the actors involved in the formation of the conglomerate in 1978 with the aim of concentrating the Spanish copper industry under a single holding company. In addition, from 1981 it started up the kaolinite deposit at Vimianzo (A Coruña) through the subsidiary (CAVISA), which was 80 % owned by Río Tinto Minera. Between 1980 and 1981 RTM also exploited the gossan present in the voids of the , in the province of Huelva.

Final stage

However, the expansion strategy undertaken by Río Tinto Minera ended up being a failure. During the 1980s, RTM's economic situation was not good due to the crisis that mining was going through in those years, with frequent negative balances in the company's accounts. The debt contracted with the banks also grew exponentially, which compromised the future strategies of the mining subsidiary of the ERT group. Another adversity that RTM had to face was the significant drop in the price of copper on the international markets during those years, so that the copper business line in Riotinto became a real "money sink". As a result, between 1977 and 1986 the accumulated losses exceeded 12,000 million pesetas. The ERT group adopted a policy of cost restraint which led to the closure of the century-old Riotinto railway (1984) and the copper production line (1987).

Despite the economic difficulties, Rio Tinto Minera continued to hold an important position. By 1987, it was the second largest pyrites seller in Spain, with a 38.1% share of the national market. At that time it diversified its business through various business initiatives. In 1988 it built a copper wire drawing plant in Lliçà de Vall (Barcelona) and two years later, in 1990, it acquired from the Finnish company Outokumpu the continuous casting plant for wire rod that the Ibercobre group had built in the historic SECEM complex in Córdoba.

In 1989, RTM passed into the hands of Ercros, along with the rest of the companies of the former ERT group. This situation did not last long, as Ercros sold its stake in Rio Tinto Minera to the US company Freeport-McMoRan in 1993, shortly after having declared suspension of payments. Freeport-McMoRan proceeded to break up the business into new companies: while Rio Tinto Minera continued to operate the Rio Tinto deposits, the Huelva smelter was left to . By that time, Corta Atalaya

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