A Miner Shift: Rio Tinto Trades Ownership For Offtake – OpEd

Key Takeaways:

• Bloomberg reported Sept. 24 that Rio Tinto will expand its ~20-person Singapore desk into third-party metal and derivatives, starting with alumina and North American copper; Kennecott already made 13,000 tonnes of cathode from bought concentrate in Q2 2026, after February Glencore talks failed (Glencore marketing EBIT $3.3 billion in H1).
• The author links this to host-state pressure—Mongolia reopening Oyu Tolgoi, a Chinese mills halt on Rio ore talks, Congo and Orion marketing rights—and infers Rio could sell risky equity and keep offtake, as at Sangaredi (22.95% equity, 45% of output), with Niger’s Somaïr fight as a warning.
• Tests named: whether asset sales retain offtake, whether the desk grows (Anglo cut trading after BHP interest), and whether more states demand their own marketing rights; U.S. Project Vault picked Glencore and Mercuria as first buyers the day before the report.

Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest miner, plans to expand its metals trading into material produced by other companies and into derivatives, according to a Bloomberg report published on September 24. The plan is modest in scale, and its strategic significance lies in the capability it creates: a miner that trades third-party metal can keep commercial control of a mine’s output after selling its ownership of that mine.

A Small Trading Team Built After the Glencore Talks

The expansion will take place within Rio’s Singapore-based commercial division, which employs about 20 traders and may add several more. Reported priorities are alumina and North American copper, where the Kennecott smelter in Utah has spare capacity. Kennecott produced 13,000 metric tons of cathode from purchased concentrate in the second quarter of 2026.

The plan follows the collapse of merger talks with Glencore in February, in which Glencore’s trading network was an attraction for Rio. Glencore’s marketing division earned $3.3 billion in adjusted EBIT in the first half of 2026, according to its half-year report. Rio is now building internally a capability that it did not obtain through acquisition.

Host Governments and State Buyers Are Revising Terms on Rio’s Assets

Rio’s ownership positions face renegotiation across Eurasia. Mongolia, which holds 34 percent of the Rio-operated Oyu Tolgoi copper mine, moved in March to reopen the project’s terms and secure a larger share of returns, four years after Rio waived $2.4 billion of Mongolian debt. Rio agreed in June to adjust the loan rate charged to its state partner and to halve its management fees, and protesters blocked concentrate exports from the mine that same month.

China applies its leverage through purchasing. China Mineral Resources Group, the state iron ore buyer, directed some steel mills in August to halt negotiations with Rio for shipments from September. State-owned Chinalco is Rio’s largest shareholder, and that relationship did not prevent the directive.

Concurrently, marketing rights are being negotiated as separate assets. The US-backed Orion consortium’s proposed 40 percent purchase of Glencore’s Congolese copper and cobalt mines includes the right to direct the sale of its share of production. Congo’s state miner Gécamines obtained purchase rights over output in a 2023 settlement with CMOC and formed a marketing venture with Mercuria in 2025.

The Inference: Selling Equity and Retaining Offtake

These conditions support an inference that Rio has not stated. A company with trading capability can sell its equity in a jurisdiction with high renegotiation risk and keep a contract to buy the output. The capital exposed to expropriation falls, and the commercial relationship continues, provided the company can place and hedge the tonnage it buys.

Rio already operates a version of this model. At the Sangaredi bauxite mine in Guinea, Rio holds 22.95 percent of shares and receives 45 percent of production. Commercial claims on output have also served as an instrument against host governments: after Chile nationalized the El Teniente mine in 1971, Kennecott (now a Rio subsidiary) pursued Chilean copper shipments through European courts.

The model has limits. Niger nationalized the Somaïr mine in 2025 after accusing France’s Orano of taking 86.3 percent of production against a 63.4 percent shareholding. An offtake share larger than an equity share can become the source of the dispute.

Trading Capability Determines Access to State Procurement

Trading capability also determines access to state-directed demand. The Export-Import Bank of the United States approved a loan of up to $10 billion in February for Project Vault, a critical minerals reserve. Glencore and Mercuria became the first participants in its procurement company on September 23, one day before the Rio report.

Washington is directing procurement through companies that can source, finance, and deliver metal from many producers. A miner that sells only its own output cannot perform that function.

The expansion also has a fiscal dimension. Rio’s 2022 Australian tax settlement fixed transfer pricing between Australia and the Singapore commercial center through 2026. Rio’s Singapore entities reported $893 million in profit before tax from sales and marketing in 2021, and a larger third-party business begins there in the final year of the agreed period.

Outlook: Three Indicators to Monitor

Three indicators will test the inference. The first is whether Rio’s planned asset sales, including titanium operations in South Africa and Madagascar that are under strategic review, are structured with retained offtake. The second is whether the commercial division grows beyond its current size, given that Anglo American reduced its trading unit in 2024 after a takeover approach from BHP.

The third indicator is whether more host governments demand marketing rights over their own share of production. The trajectory of these indicators suggests a mining sector in which governments, trading houses, and miners compete for the right to sell metal. Under these conditions, a growing share of the commercial value in mining accrues to the party that controls sales.