Ores from Rio Tinto's copper mines are processed into refined copper locally or sold in an upgraded form to other smelting and refining companies.

Because of copper's special property of high electrical conductivity, much of Rio Tinto's copper is used to fabricate wire products such as heavy cable for power transmission, lighter gauge wire for use in buildings and winding wire for electric motors. Other major uses are construction materials for buildings, pipes for drinking water and central heating systems, tubes for air conditioning units and various brass products. The new euro coins use copper. Copper is one of the most recyclable metals.

The electronics revolution, and the continuing electrification of developing countries (one third of the world's population is still without electric power), have resulted in strong growth in world demand for copper. Between 1990 and 2000 this growth in demand averaged 3.5 per cent a year. In China, the growth was 12 per cent a year.

The major challenge associated with mining copper is that the metal occurs in low concentrations in the earth's crust. Ores being mined today typically contain less than one per cent copper. Given an annual world production of mined copper of over 13.5 million tonnes, this adds up to a lot of waste rock requiring good management.

Another challenge is the disposal of sulphur that is usually associated with the copper in the earth as a copper sulphide mineral. The smelting of copper concentrate to produce metal separates sulphur from the copper. At Rio Tinto's smelters most of the sulphur is captured to produce sulphuric acid for use in industrial purposes while the remaining small amount of residue is emitted to air as sulphur dioxide.

The Group also has a number of research programmes associated with understanding the impacts of the use of copper on the environment and human health (www.copper.org).