Rio Tinto's rewind to 2004 shows it's a victim of own success

London

RIO Tinto Group has to work twice as hard to turn the profit it did a decade ago.

Back in 2004, the world's second biggest mining company produced about 60 million tonnes of iron ore and reported underlying earnings of US$1.3 billion in the second half of the year. Now it extracts about 130 million tonnes in six months for roughly the same profit.