Rio Tinto Pours $573 Million Into Two Hemispheres as Output Surges

Rio Tinto commits $473M to revive Zulti South titanium project in South Africa and A$100M for housing in Western Australia, balancing resource security with workforce needs.

Rio Tinto is deploying capital on two continents with surgical precision, committing $473 million to revive a stalled South African minerals sands project and A$100 million to underwrite housing in Western Australia’s resource towns. The twin announcements, coming as the miner’s shares trade near 52-week highs, underscore a strategy that marries long-term resource security with the practical realities of keeping a remote workforce housed.

The bigger ticket—$473 million—goes to Zulti South, a titanium and zirconium deposit in KwaZulu-Natal that has sat idle since 2020. That year, regional unrest forced Rio Tinto’s subsidiary Richards Bay Minerals (RBM) to halt construction on a project that had only broken ground in 2016. Now the diggers are rolling again. The build phase will take roughly two and a half years, with commercial production slated for the fourth quarter of 2028.

Zulti South is no growth play. It is a replacement project, designed to pump out 660,000 tonnes of concentrate annually once the adjacent Zulti North deposit runs dry—expected around 2030. RBM currently processes more than 70 million tonnes of sand and slurry each year at Zulti North, yielding over one million tonnes of titanium dioxide and up to 550,000 tonnes of high-grade foundry pig iron. The new operation taps into 1.6 billion tonnes of mineral sands reserves with an average metal grade of 7.4 percent, extending RBM’s life well beyond 2050.

On the other side of the world, Rio Tinto is tackling a different kind of bottleneck. On April 28, it announced a A$100 million contribution to Western Australia’s regional housing program—the largest private donation in a A$692 million state package. The money, part of a broader A$250 million commitment under the Resources Community Investment Initiative, will fund more than 500 new public-sector homes in towns along the miner’s operational spine: Karratha, Wickham, Tom Price, Paraburdoo, Roebourne, Broome, Geraldton and Albany. Premier Roger Cook welcomed the move as a stabilising force for regional economies that depend on resource workers.

The capital deployment comes against a backdrop of strong operational momentum. Rio Tinto’s copper-equivalent production rose nine percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026. Iron ore output from the Pilbara climbed 13 percent to 78.8 million tonnes—the second-best first quarter since 2018. But tropical cyclones clipped about eight million tonnes from Pilbara shipments, roughly half of which management expects to recover over the rest of the year. Copper growth was driven by the ramp-up at Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia, while aluminium held steady and alumina advanced six percent.

Lithium was the weak link. Carbonate production slumped 26 percent to 12,700 tonnes after heavy rains in Argentina. Still, Rio Tinto maintained its full-year target of 61,000 to 64,000 tonnes.

The stock has been on a tear. Rio Tinto’s shares have surged more than 50 percent since the start of the year, trading near €105—just shy of a 52-week high of €105.22. In London, the stock is close to its own one-year peak, with Bernstein rating it a “Buy” and a price target of £62, citing a bullish outlook on aluminium prices. Deutsche Bank Research and Berenberg are more cautious, sticking with “Hold” ratings and targets of 6,900 pence and 6,600 pence respectively. Across 15 analysts covering the stock, the consensus is “Hold,” with an average price target of roughly $92—leaving little upside at current levels.

One overhang has been removed. In February, talks with Glencore over a potential merger collapsed. The two sides could not agree on the valuation of Glencore’s copper business, the future project pipeline or the proposed management structure. Rio Tinto said it walked away because no deal could deliver genuine value to its own shareholders.

The Zulti South restart and the housing investment are different in scale and geography, but they share a common logic. One secures the raw material base for decades; the other secures the people needed to dig it up.