In the end, consumers will pay for customs duties of 50 % imposed on aluminum produced in Quebec. The boss of Rio Tinto said that Australian society had managed to protect its margins.
“We have learned a lot in the past six months and we have come to the conclusion that we can manage the situation for aluminum,” said its president and chief executive officer, Jakob Stausholm, at a call conference on Wednesday to discuss the mid-years.
“I think it is more the consumer who will have to pay. We have been able to get things right [les coûts] Added the manager.
American companies depend on Canada to meet their aluminum needs. The United States has produced only 670,000 tonnes of aluminum in 2024. Canada sent almost 2.9 million tonnes in the United States, 70 % of American imports.
The mining giant has even identified aluminum and copper as segments that compensated for the weakness of the iron ore price, while it has published its worst result for a first semester since 2020.
Despite the complexity linked to customs duties, Mr. Stausholm mentioned that the return to the investment in the aluminum segment had doubled.
The Trump administration imposed, in March, customs duties of 25 % on aluminum imports. They subsequently increased 50 % at the beginning of June.
The manager conceded that he did not like customs duties imposed by the Trump administration, but he did not wish to make a headline. “This is an issue between nations. […] It is not our place to make major statements around that. »»
His counterpart with Alcoa, William Oplinger, was more critical last week, saying that Washington was on the wrong track. “Each aluminum worker in Canada supports approximately 12 to 13 downstream jobs [transformation] in the United States, “he said.
In the primary aluminum industry, Rio Tinto has five facilities in Quebec, according to its website. The multinational also has a minority participation in two other facilities.
In the primary aluminum sector, the multinational also has installations in Australia, New Zealand and Oman.
Its factories in Quebec are responsible for approximately 45 % of its global aluminum production in the first half, according to its production data. By including its factory in British Columbia, the Canadian part is around 57 %.
