Rio Tinto ships its first lithium from Argentina and lines up 1.175 billion dollars to finish the Rincon plant

Rio Tinto secures 1.175 billion dollars to expand its Argentina lithium plant

Rio Tinto closed 1.175 billion dollars in financing from 4 international lenders in March 2026, to build a much larger lithium plant at Rincon, its project in Salta Province, Argentina, in the salt flat region known as the lithium triangle that Argentina shares with Chile and Bolivia. The financing arrived days after Rincon sent its first commercial shipment, about 200 tonnes of lithium carbonate, the battery grade compound used in most electric vehicle and grid batteries, out of the country. The 4 lenders are the International Finance Corporation, IDB Invest, Export Finance Australia and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, known as JBIC.

A 200 tonne shipment from a plant built for far more

The shipment left the Port of Buenos Aires bound for Shanghai, China, made at the existing starter plant at Rincon, which produces 3,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year. Rio Tinto uses direct lithium extraction at the site, a technology that pulls lithium out of underground brine using chemical processing instead of evaporating it in open air ponds for months at a time. Jerome Pecresse, Rio Tinto chief executive of aluminium and lithium, said the new financing matters for reasons beyond the cargo itself.

We appreciate the strong support from IFC, IDB Invest, Export Finance Australia and JBIC as we progress the Rincon project.

Jerome Pecresse, Rio Tinto chief executive of aluminium and lithium. Source 4.

The financing structure behind the 1.175 billion dollars

The International Finance Corporation disclosed its own role in the deal directly, a loan of up to 400 million dollars, with the remaining debt mobilized through parallel loans from IDB Invest, Export Finance Australia and JBIC. That leaves about 775 million dollars from the other 3 lenders combined, an amount this article calculates by subtracting 400 million from 1.175 billion, not a figure any lender states. Reading the disclosure record the corporation itself published, rather than a news summary of it, shows the shape of this deal, 1 large loan alongside 3 parallel loans, not 4 similarly sized commitments. The full plant is estimated to cost about 2.5 billion dollars, so the new financing covers less than half of it, and neither Rio Tinto nor any lender states publicly what covers the rest.

Output climbs in stages, in a market still worth building through

Argentina national lithium mine production, all brine operations combined, rose from 13,800 tonnes of contained lithium in 2024 to an estimated 23,000 tonnes in 2025, a 67% increase, according to the United States Geological Survey. That is a country wide count in a different unit, contained lithium metal rather than lithium carbonate, and Rincon by March 2026 had shipped only about 200 tonnes from a 3,000 tonne a year starter plant, a small and early contributor to that national total rather than the reason for it.

Rio Tinto is building through a weak market. Benchmark Chinese prices for battery grade lithium carbonate have fallen more than 80% from their 2022 peak, and major producers are continuing to build projects anyway, because a lithium mine takes years to build and companies plan around long term demand rather than the current price. The expanded Rincon plant is meant to lift output from 3,000 tonnes a year today to a targeted 60,000 tonnes a year once it is fully built.