Rio Tinto Plc (RIO) announced Thursday a strategic two-year collaboration with Amazon Web Services that marks a notable shift in how copper gets produced and delivered to the tech industry. AWS is becoming the first customer of Rio Tinto's Nuton Technology, which recently deployed its bioleaching process at industrial scale at the Johnson Camp copper mine in Arizona.
The timing matters. Johnson Camp, operated by Gunnison Copper, now holds the distinction of being the lowest-carbon primary copper producer in the United States based on the mine-to-refined-metal metric. The project is expected to produce approximately 30,000 tonnes of refined copper over the next four years.
How the Partnership Works
AWS will incorporate the first copper produced by Nuton into components for its U.S. data centers. In return, AWS is providing cloud-based analytics to help refine and optimize Nuton's bioleaching technology at the Johnson Camp operation.
The technical setup is interesting. Nuton uses AWS platforms to model heap-leach performance and feed advanced analytics into its decision-making systems, which improves copper recovery while optimizing acid and water usage. The modular bioleaching process relies on naturally occurring microorganisms to extract copper from primary sulphide ores. When paired with these digital tools, the system allows for rapid scaling and adaptation to different ore types, which accelerates the path from development to production.
The process produces 99.99% pure copper on-site, which eliminates the need for traditional smelters and refineries and speeds up the supply chain considerably. It also uses less water, reduces carbon emissions, and can recover copper from ore that was previously considered waste material.
What the Executives Are Saying
Rio Tinto CEO Katie Jackson described the collaboration as "a powerful example of how industrial innovation and cloud technology can combine to deliver cleaner, lower-carbon materials at scale." She noted that bringing Nuton copper into AWS's U.S. data center supply chain can "strengthen domestic resilience" and "secure the critical materials those facilities need, closer to where they're used."
Amazon's Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst emphasized that as the company expands its data center operations, securing access to lower-carbon materials produced close to home strengthens its supply chain resilience as well as its ability to "decarbonize at scale."