Copper-crazed Rio Tinto leaving no stone unturned as it launches exploration blitz in WA’s wilderness

Rio Tinto is deploying its exploration arsenal into some of Western Australia’s most remote areas in hopes of hitting a red metal mother lode. Rio in recent weeks has ramped up plans for a greenfields exploration campaign deep in the State’s expansive shoreless void, understood to be targeting tier-one copper discoveries to anchor its growth over the next decade or two. The mining titan is feverishly laying claim to vast tracts of frontier territory located many kilometres away from any major roads, ports and mine infrastructure — including its own Winu copper-gold development in the east Pilbara. Rio this month pegged five tenements, spanning a total of about 1250 square kilometres, mainly in the Little Sandy and Gibson Deserts. The February tenement spree is about 66 times the size of Rottnest Island and follows a similar land grab during November and December across the two aforementioned deserts plus the Great Victoria Desert on the Nullabor Plain near South Australia. Most of WA’s mining operations are clustered in the Pilbara and western parts of the Goldfields and Mid-West regions — far away from Rio’s latest exploration drive. Rio, up until now, has sparingly ventured beyond its Pilbara iron ore heartland. Rio declined to comment on the revelation of its growing WA copper crusade, which comes less than a fortnight after chief executive Simon Trott flagged a “significant” increase in funds allocated towards finding the coveted red metal. “Our exploration teams have really narrowed their scope and put copper front and centre,” Mr Trott said. “As a result, we’re now directing 85 per cent of our (annual $1.1 billion) exploration budget towards copper.” The focus of the hunt would be on the copper-rich South America, according to Mr Trott, but WA would still receive a sizeable chunk of the budget. Mining giants across the globe are clamouring to boost their reserves of copper, with the red metal’s demand expected to boom for decades to come given its extensive applications in the data centres and computer chips that make artificial intelligence possible. BHP is sitting pretty as the world’s largest producer of copper but rival Rio is playing catch-up outside of the top five. Rio’s recent interest in a $350b-plus merger with Glencore was fuelled by the latter’s large copper project pipeline. With a Glencore deal now dead in the water, Mr Trott is putting more emphasis on its majority-owned Winu deposit in the east Pilbara. A pre-feasibility study for an initial processing capacity development at Winu of up to 10 million tonnes per annum was completed in the final quarter of 2025. The project’s feasibility study is scheduled for completion by the end of 2026.