At the investor conference, Rio Tinto said it would add up to $500 million in additional spending to the Western Australian iron ore business by 2020-2022 for the construction of plant equipment and infrastructure.

Rio Tinto said that the operating cost of the West Pilbara mining area (or continuous capital expenditure) will rise to between A$1 billion and A$1.5 billion per year in 2020-2022, up from the previous A$1 billion.

Chris Salisbury, head of Rio Tinto's iron ore business, said at the meeting that some of its assets, including the major processing plants at TomTom's mine, needed structural upgrades. Rio Tinto has cut its iron ore target production by 2019 three times this year. The last time was in June this year, due to operational problems, the target sales of iron ore in 2019 was reduced from 3.33 to 343 million tons to 3.2-330 million tons. Mr. Salisbury said that these operational issues have been brought under control and will cost about $80 million to repair.

Rio Tinto's 2020 iron ore sales are expected to grow by up to 5% year-on-year. Rio Tinto's production capacity target is 360 million tons. Once the first phase of the Koodaideri project in the new mining area is completed (expected in late 2021), it can achieve this goal (the actual production needs to be determined according to market demand and other factors). In the third quarter of 2019, Rio Tinto's railway and port capacity and mine output are calculated on a weekly basis, and the short-term annualized rate (5-7 weeks) has reached this capacity.

The Koodaideri project was approved by the project in November 2018 and is Rio Tinto's first intelligent mine. The annual iron ore production capacity of the project is estimated to be 43 million tons, and it is expected to reach 70 million tons of production capacity in the later stage of project development.