Rio hails $80 million cashflow boost from big data

Rio Tinto believes its embryonic grasp of big data has improved free cashflow by $80 million over the past year, signalling the massive potential for the technology to be expanded across the company, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

In early works on its copper division, Rio has found it can improve the quality of copper concentrates produced and the efficiency of its processing equipment by communicating thousands of data streams to a new “processing excellence centre” in Brisbane.

Rio chief executive Sam Walsh showed off the new centre to media on Thursday and said it was a practical way of creating extra value for shareholders.

“People have been talking about big data for 10 years … this is physically seeing it on the ground and leveraging it to look for anomalies and to look for variations in processing,” he said.

Labor set to roll dice again with revised mine tax

Labor is planning to take a revised version of the mining tax to the next election as it continues to oppose the Abbott government’s attempts to repeal the minerals resource rent tax and cut billions of dollars in spending, according to The Australian.

Joe Hockey said last night Labor’s refusal to repeal the mining tax and spending linked to the MRRT in the Senate, where Labor and the Greens still command a majority, had already cost $900 million in lost savings this financial year.

Iron ore tipped to stay above $US100

After a week of turmoil among commodities markets, investors are beginning to reassess the outlook for metals, with iron ore and copper prices are expected to hold up in 2014, despite this week’s “flash crash”, according to the Australian Financial Review.