Rio Tinto helps Juniors

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Today Laura Gunnis the Rio Tinto relationship manager at miningoilandgas jobs.com in a media interview stated that she is pleased to announce the news communicated to her that Rio Tinto is assisting junior miners in a seriously significant manner at a time when the industry is experiencing many challenges.

Gunnis said “It is the case that mining is suffering at the minute due to the economics of commodity prices. This is not unusual for the industry and over the many years that I have been associated with the industry I have seen events like this before. However I have not experienced such a generous offer to what are essentially competitors of Rio.”

Gunnis added “Rio Tinto has announced that laser mineral analysis technology developed by geoscientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ore Deposit Science (CODES) over the last decade will be offered to junior explorers for free.”

The technology, developed by a team of geoscientists led by Professors David Cooke and Bruce Gemmell at the University of Tasmania, was supported by AMIRA International research projects. Rio Tinto was one of the companies that helped finance the research.

Rio adapted the technology for their Bundoora Research laboratories in Melbourne, and have been testing it on their own mineral projects for the last two years. The technology uses the changes in the concentration of trace elements in minerals to define the location of buried ore deposits. The technique has been tested by the CODES research team on many major deposits world-wide and shown to have a very high success rate for discovery.

“The fact that Rio, one of the largest global miners, has comprehensively adopted the technology for their exploration programs and is now proposing to use this to assist junior companies to discover the next major ore deposit is testimony to the high quality and industry relevant research carried out at University of Tasmania,” Professor Bruce Gemmell, the director of CODES, said.

• For Job Opportunities with Rio Tinto head to www.miningoilandgasjobs.com