The company's initial operations focused on extracting zinc from mine tailings of the Broken Hill Ore DepositatBroken Hill, New South Wales, Australia.[1] The company was founded in Melbourne on 9 September 1905 as the Zinc Corporation Limited, to exploit residual zinc concentrations with an estimated value of $12 million in the 6 million tons of mine tailings deposited from mining activities over the previous 20 years. Key figures involved in the effort included William Baillieu and William Sydney Robinson.[2] Also involved was future U.S. president, but then a mining engineer working for Bewick, Moreing and Company,[3] Herbert Hoover, who inspected the tailing dumps in the group's investigations prior to formation of the company.[4][5][6] Other investors in the new company were Clark & Robinson (William Clark, Lionel Robinson and Company), and Arthur Terrell.[3]
They established concentrating mills at Broken Hill in 1905 and 1910, and in 1906 an associated sulphuric acid manufacturing plant whose first manager was (later Sir) H. W. Gepp.[7]
In 1911 they expanded into primary mining activities with the purchase of Broken Hill South Blocks Ltd (colloquially "South Blocks"), constructing underground mines[4] and mining for zinc, lead, silver[8] and gold[9] in the Broken Hill area.
In 1949, Zinc Corporation merged with the Imperial Smelting Corporation to become Consolidated Zinc.[9] In 1953, Haddon King became chief geologist.[10]
Over time, the company built up substantial financial resources but failed to develop suitable new mining projects. This led to a merger in 1962 with the Rio Tinto Company, a company who found itself in a complementary position of having substantial development opportunities but not enough financial resources with which to pursue them. The resulting company, known as The Rio Tinto – Zinc Corporation (RTZ), and its main subsidiary, Conzinc Riotinto of Australia (CRA), would eventually become today's Rio Tinto Group.[8]
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