Rio Tinto’s Kennecott copper mine suspends operations as contract worker dies

An employee of a contracted company died on Thursday following an incident at Rio Tinto’s Kennecott mine in Utah, the world’s largest producer of iron ore said on Friday without providing further details.

Operations at the Kennecott mine site have been suspended following Thursday’s accident, the Anglo-Australian miner said, while its CEO Simon Trott said he would travel to Kennecott.

The Kennecott copper mining operation is one of the top-producing mines in the world, according to the company’s website.

The death is the latest in a series of fatal incidents across a few of Rio’s mines, with the miner reporting the death of a contract worker last month at its SimFer mine, a part of Guinea’s Simandou iron ore project.

(By Shivangi Lahiri; Editing by Alan Barona and Arun Koyyur)