Rio Tinto resumes operations at Western Australia's Dampier port after five weeks

Rio Tinto RIO said on Monday that its iron ore export facility in Western Australia's Dampier port resumed operations after being offline for over five weeks due to flooding from tropical cyclones.

"A railcar dumper at the East Intercourse Island (EII) port facility was flooded when Tropical Cyclone Sean delivered record rain... Dumper operation at EII resumed last week and the first ship was loaded today," Rio said in a statement.

Rio, in its full-year results, had stated it expects to record total losses of 13 million metric tons of iron ore due to tropical cyclones that have hit Australia's west coast and disrupted shipments.

"The extent of the outage suggest they won't be able to get to the midpoint of guidance," said RBC analyst Kaan Peker in Sydney.

Rio, world's biggest iron ore producer, also kept its full-year iron ore shipment guidance from Western Australia for 2025 unchanged at 323 million to 338 million metric tons.

The cyclone season in Western Australia usually runs from November to April.

"As the system rebalances and normal operations resume, an update will be provided in the first quarter operations review on April 16", Rio said in a statement.

Rio had reported underlying earnings of $10.87 billion in February, missing Visible Alpha consensus estimate of $11 billion.

Shares of the mining giant were up 1.9% as of 0134 GMT, while the broader benchmark ASX 200 XJO was up 0.3%.