Rio Tinto has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide AWS with copper that it sourced from its bioleaching technology.
Under the two-year agreement, AWS will become Nuton Technology’s first customer and use the first Nuton copper ever produced for its U.S. data centres, while also providing cloud-based data and analytics support for Nuton’s bioleaching technology at Gunnison Copper’s Johnson Camp mine.
Nuton is also utilising AWS platforms to simulate heap-leach performance and feed advanced analytics into Nuton’s decision systems, allowing for optimised acid and water use while improving predictions for copper recovery.
The agreement comes amid the rampant growth of the AI industry and the sector’s need for supplies of copper and other critical minerals to build data centres.
Rio Tinto Copper CEO Katie Jackson said: ****“This collaboration is a powerful example of how industrial innovation and cloud technology can combine to deliver cleaner, lower-carbon materials at scale.
“Nuton has already proven its ability to rapidly move from idea to industrial production, and AWS’s data and analytics expertise will help us to accelerate optimisation and verification across operations.
“Importantly, by bringing Nuton copper into AWS’s U.S. data-centre supply chain, we’re helping to strengthen domestic resilience and secure the critical materials those facilities need, closer to where they’re used.
“Together we can supply the copper critical to modern data infrastructure while demonstrating how mining can contribute to more sustainable supply chains.”
Rio Tinto’s Nuton technology uses less water and has lower carbon emissions compared with conventional concentrator processing routes, while also recovering value from ore previously classified as waste.
The process produces 99.99 per cent pure copper cathode at the mine gate and removes the need for traditional concentrators, smelter and refineries and shortens the mine-to-market supply chain.
Amazon’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst said: “Amazon’s Climate Pledge goal to reach net zero carbon by 2040 requires us to innovate across every part of our operations, including how we source the materials that power our infrastructure.
“This collaboration with Nuton Technology represents exactly the kind of breakthrough we need—a fundamentally different approach to copper production that helps reduce carbon emissions and water use.
“As we continue to invest in next-generation carbon-free energy technology and expand our data centre operations, securing access to lower-carbon materials produced close to home strengthens both our supply chain resilience and our ability to ddecarboniseat scale.”