The Australian company Riversdale Mining, one of the major investors in the Moatize coal basin in the western Mozambican province of Tete, has been taken over by the London-based mining giant Rio Tinto.On Friday Rio Tinto announced that it has acquired a majority interest in Riversdale, giving it control of Riversdale’s open cast coal mine in Moatize district in Tete province.The Benga project at Moatize is a 65/35 joint venture with Tata Steel of India, with coal due to begin being exported before the end of the year.Benga has known coal reserves of four billion tonnes, but a second area explored by Riversdale, the Zambeze project, much of which is within the boundaries of Tete city itself, holds at least nine billion tonnes.The Zambeze project is entirely owned by Riversdale, and has a high potential for mining coking coal for export.After a four month process, Rio Tinto’s share in Riversdale finally passed 50 per cent on Friday. Reacting to the news, Rio Tinto Energy chief executive Doug Ritchie said “we have the expertise, resources and incentives to efficiently develop the projects to a world-class standard, delivering immense benefits to the people of Mozambique”.Across the world Rio Tinto is involved with aluminium, copper, diamonds, energy (coal and uranium), gold, industrial minerals (borax, titanium dioxide, salt, talc) and iron ore.Rio Tinto’s share price on the London Stock Exchange jumped by 1.57 per cent on Friday morning.Ritchie and two other Rio Tinto officials, Matt Coulter (chief development officer for coal) and David Peever (Rio Tinto Australia managing director) were immediately appointed to the Riversdale board, and further appointments are expected to follow.“The growth prospects for the Riversdale assets are considerable”, said Ritchie. “We remain optimistic about the outlook for the global coking coal market. This is a great opportunity for our business to deliver on the development of a large scale coking coal resource”.
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