Rio Tinto investing in Serbia exploration, mining projects

Multinational mining corporation Rio Tinto will invest about USD 40 million in a new copper and gold deposit project near Majdanpek.

The investment will be made in cooperation with the Australian company Raiden Resources, which owns licenses for exploration near this eastern Serbia town, writes the website SEEbiz.

With the investment, Rio Tinto will hold 75 percent ownership of these exploration rights.

The multinational company will thus become a majority owner of exploration rights at the sites Zapadni (Western) Majdanpek, Majdanpek Pojas, and Donje Nevlje, which, according to previous exploration carried out by Raiden Resources, belong to a group of "potentially first class deposits of gold and copper."

The government of Serbia and Rio Tinto recently set up a working group to deal with preparations for the opening of a lithium mine near Loznica, in the Jadar Basin, western Serbia. Along with the 50 million euros spent on geological exploration, Rio Tinto would initially invested 90 million euros in the project.

Lithium deposits in the Jadar Basin are estimated at 136 million tons, and it is presumed that the site holds almost ten percent of the planet's total lithium reserves. The metal is used in state-of-the-art technologies.