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North Wales Live
16 hours ago
- Automotive
- North Wales Live
The mysterious loss of historic road feature that helped change North Wales forever
Still standing proud, if slightly neglected, are 82 stone monoliths along the route of a road that marked the birth of modern North Wales. Thomas Telford's A5 trunk road was a masterpiece of engineering crowned by the the world's first major suspension bridge linking Anglesey and Gwynedd. While the bridge's 200th anniversary will be celebrated in style, if belatedly, next year, the fate of other road elements have faded into genteel obscurity. Among them are its silent sentinels, the stone markers which counted off the 243 miles between London and Holyhead. Less charismatic than bridges, staging inns or tollhouses, they were nevertheless vital components of a modernised transport system that suddenly made the UK a much smaller place. In North Wales, an exhaustive study by a retired college lecturer has confirmed that 82 Telford milestones are still standing today. There's just one problem: there should be 83. The mystery of the missing milestone has taxed the patience of 76-year-old John Price. Having spend six-years researching Telford's North Wales milestones, he's been left frustrated by the absence of one that should be standing in Holyhead, Anglesey. 'This stone can't have just vanished,' he said. 'It weighs over 250lb and measures about 6ft long. These historic markers, placed during Thomas Telford's construction of the London to Holyhead road, are protected by law and serve as tangible reminders of our rich past.' Prior to retirement Mr Price, from Glan Conwy, was chief design engineer at Quinton Hazel Automotive in Mochdre. Before that he was senior lecturer in computing technology at Coleg Menai Bangor. Both specialisms were harnessed in his pursuit of Telford's A5 milestones and others across North Wales. It began when he spotted Milestone No. 45 in Betws-y-Coed, Conwy. Was it the only one left, he wondered. Using old Victorian Ordnance Survey map and cross-referencing known sites with Google Earth and Google Maps, he initially established that most milestones on the region's roads had 'poor survival rates'. There were two exceptions – the A545 Menai Bridge to Beaumaris road, where all five milestones are still present, and Telford's A5 road. As many were hidden behind hedges and shrubbery, some foot slogging was needed to confirm their existence. 'It wasn't difficult to find them,' said Mr Price. 'They're all a mile apart, so once you've found one....' One A5 milestone remained elusive. This was Milestone No. 2, whose inscription read, 'Holyhead 2 Bangor 23'. As its name suggests, it was the second on the route from Holyhead harbour – point zero was midway along the Irish Mail Jetty where mail was once transferred to ships under armed guard. Stepping back one mile from here, Milestone No. 1 can be found on London Road. The next one should be near Penrhos beach, except it isn't. Instead the space is occupied by the giant footprint created by Rio Tinto's Anglesey Aluminium plant, built around 1970. 'Its location, estimated from the 1888-1913 OS map, places it where the buildings were erected,' said Mr Price. 'The last person to have seen it may have been a JCB driver. "Yet it's is highly unlikely the stone was simply discarded - someone must know what happened to it. Does anyone remember seeing the milestone being moved or removed? 'Perhaps it stills exist somewhere nearby – in storage, on private land or in someone's garden? Do any former Anglesey Aluminium workers, contractors, or former Anglesey Council employees recall what may have happened to the milestone during construction?' Anyone who can help Mr Price complete his quest, and so preserve an important element of the region's heritage, can contact him via email on TelfordMilestones@ A clue to what might have happened can be found in a Denbighshire pub. Mounted on the wall near the entrance is what Mr Price and others suspect is the original cast iron plate from a milestone. A replacement plate has since been fitted to the milestone itself. 'You can see the damage, where the stone was broken to insert a pry bar behind the cast iron plate for removal,' said Mr Price. 'The plates were inset into the stones to make them more difficult to remove. Steel pegs or nails secured the plates, likely driven into lead-sleeved holes.' There's no suggestion, he added, that the pub is aware of the plate's provenance. The A5 milestones were designed by Telford himself and made from limestone quarried from near Red Wharf Bay, Anglesey. This was the same source for some of the stone used for both bridges across the Menai Strait as well as Admiralty Arch on Salt Island, Holyhead. Recognising their historical importance, some years ago the Welsh Government undertook work to preserve the A5 milestones. Hence some cast iron plates displaying place names and distances are not originals – nor indeed are the milestones themselves. Somehow, said Mr Price, Holyhead's Milestone No. 2 was overlooked by the restoration project. 'Maybe Grade 11 listed protection was not in force when the aluminium plant was being constructed?' he sighed. As well as vandalism, Telford's milestones have faced two other less obvious threats. Over the years, some have shrunk in height. Extensive road resurfacing over two centuries has seen the ground rise around them, making them now appear much smaller. An exception is No. 27 at Tal-y-Bont near Bangor, still standing 4.5ft above ground level. Another insidious threat has been the adoption of modern machinery by farmers and highways managers. Years of roadworks, and grass and hedge cutting, has seen many milestones slowly whittled away by accidental contact. Almost too late for protection is a damaged milestone on the A470 by the Waterloo Bridge in Betws-y-Coed. Having been hacked away, and now missing its inscription, it cuts a forlorn figure by the roadside. To prevent further damage, Mr Price suggests two solutions. One involves setting small coloured squares into adjacent kerbs or road gutters – this would clearly indicate the locations of milestones absorbed by shrubbery. The other is more drastic: concreting a square metre or so around vegetation-obscured stones. This should leave advancing hedge-cutter operators in little doubt of their presence. 'Historic milestones are protected by law,' said Mr Price. 'But ways of preventing them from becoming damaged by machinery and roadworks are clearly lacking.' Better preserved are perhaps the least celebrated examples of Telford's A5 ingenuity. Along the route are 300 alcoves – roadside recesses used for storing road repair materials such as stones, gravel and grit. The grit was also available to spread on snow and ice during severe weather - particularly relevant in places like the Nant Ffrancon Pass, where some good examples can be seen. The alcoves are usually 16ft long and are either rectangular or semi-circular. Mr Price said they were sited with typical exactness. 'They were located on the side of the road that gave them maximum sunlight, thus keeping the gravel drier and less likely to get frozen,' he said. Having taken a deep dive into the A5's engineering, infrastructure and logistics, he remains in awe of its achievement and robustness. To document his findings, he's compiled a database of A5 milestones. It was recently published online, an excellent resource for anyone with an interest in local history. You can find it here. In its introduction, he wrote: 'To support the mail service from London to Holyhead, a journey that took 27 hours, teams of four horses were changed at approximately every 12 miles. 'The mail coaches in particular travelled not only by day but also in the dark of night, aided only by oil lamps affixed to the coaches, and in all weathers; nothing could be allowed to delay the mail, which was the basis of all distant communication in those days." He continued: 'The system was so well-organised and efficient that as a mail coach approached a toll gate its post-horn was sounded. Toll-keepers who delayed the mail by failing to open the gate promptly were fined. 'Stagecoach travel was fraught with danger – not only from tragic accidents but also deliberate acts of sabotage, such as tree branches or farm gates placed in the road to trip the horses. Vandalism is not just a modern day occurrence.' As well as mail coaches, passing the milestones would have been horse riders, horse-drawn carriages and scores of people on foot. Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox Mr Price added: "It is not hard to imagine today, as we pass these mostly highly visible milestones as we travel on the A5, the passengers in the stagecoaches glancing at the milestones as they ticked off the miles on what was said by many to be a very tedious journey."
West Australian
2 days ago
- Business
- West Australian
BEN HARVEY: Why Rio Tinto's next boss should be Simon Trott
Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm is leaving the company he joined five years ago. The suddenness of the announcement (usually these things are 'socialised' weeks or months in advance) has tongues wagging about whether it was his call to go or the Rio board Jerry Maguired him. The job of running the world's second-biggest mining company in 2025 is very different to what it was when Jakob became the big kahuna. If you had chanced upon his to-do list on the first day at work you would have seen one line and one line only: FIX JUUKAN CLUSTERF..K Dealing with the fallout from the Juukan Gorge disaster — which saw Rio destroy ancient Aboriginal shelters in an ill-advised blasting program — took longer than expected because, well, there was a lot of fallout. There were more parliamentary inquiries and more independent investigations than you could poke a stick at. Rio wanted to bleach that event from history and so got rid of anyone who was within a long distance phone call of the crime. As Joe Pesci's character in Casino observed, it's always better without witnesses. Jakob was a good choice to lead the company in the wake of Juukan. An affable Dane with an almost hippy way about him, he was at the opposite end of the personality spectrum to the bloke he replaced — the foppish and effortlessly punchable Frenchman Jean-Sebastien Jacques. Rio recovered from Juukan and things were going swimmingly courtesy of a post-COVID iron ore price so buoyant that Elmo could have run a mining company and not mess things up. Jakob soon had the board reaching for the Mylanta courtesy of two very big calls. The first was signing off on Rio's $10 billion investment in the giant Simandou iron ore mine in Guinea. This is a country whose rulers arbitrarily cancelled 50 mining licences in one month yet Jakob reckoned presented no undue sovereign risk because he counts the Guinean Government and China as joint venture partners. Sceptical? So am I. Rio's now in a devil's threesome with whatever military junta ends up running Guinea in five years and Xi Jinping, who could decide to take over the whole thing just because he can. Jakob raised Rio's risk profile further by taking a $20 billion punt on lithium — a commodity eschewed by other tier-one miners and whose value has been in the toilet ever since the world realised electric cars are actually a bit of a pain in the arse. Rio directors obviously signed off on those big decisions, so it's unlikely Jakob is getting heat from the board because of those calls. The word among analysts who follow Rio is Jakob was being put under the pump by chairman Dominic Barton. The Canadian wanted the Dane to get a handle on operations — which is code for cutting costs — because BHP had quietly become the cheapest producer in the Pilbara. Dominic knows a lot about cutting costs because he spent a large chunk of his working life at McKinsey and Co. That's the management consultancy which in the late 1990s changed Disneyland from being the happiest place on earth to a death zone, courtesy of a recommendation that it 'rationalise' maintenance. And he knows a lot about making money, having led McKinsey when the firm helped the manufacturer of OxyContin devise new and innovative ways to get the United States hooked on hillbilly heroin. Analysts have Rio's chief commercial officer Bold Baatar as one the internal front runners for the top job. Other internal candidates include Sinead Kaufman, who oversees the broadly termed 'minerals' division and copper chief executive Katie Jackson. There are a lot of external candidates but if Rio looks outside the tent it'll be competing with BHP for talent because the Big Australian is rumoured to be hunting for a new chief executive to succeed Mike Henry. Rio's head of iron ore, Simon Trott, should get the gig. Here's why. Rio talks about how it's a transnational miner with interests around the world. Its global headquarters are in London's ever-so posh St James Square and its Australian headquarters are in Melbourne's ever-so conservative Collins Street. But boil this business down and you'll find it's a dirty and dusty old West Australian iron ore company. Four dollars in every five that Rio makes in profit comes out of the Pilbara. Take West Australian iron ore out of Rio and the company wouldn't make the ASX's top 20. I suspect if you crunched the numbers hard it probably wouldn't be in the top 100, rather languishing as a penny dreadful being punted by spivs in West Perth. It makes sense that a West Australian iron ore company (and that's what Rio is) should be run by a West Australian iron ore executive who lives in the same time zone as his business's most important customer, China. Let's see whether Rio has the guts to appoint yet another white, middle-aged male to the top job.
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
Monsters of Rock: BCI fielding early enquiries from sodium-ion battery companies as Mardie production closes in
BCI Minerals aiming to open first salt project in WA in decades Demand is growing from industrial salt customers, with early inquiries coming from sodium ion battery producers ASX mining stocks fall in rough week A company building the largest salt project in Australia in the sunny and minerals rich Pilbara region says it has already fielded enquiries from sodium-ion battery producers as it looks to bring the first development of the commodity in over 25 years to life in WA. Speaking at a WA Mining Club function on Thursday, BCI Minerals (ASX:BCI) managing director David Boshoff said momentum was growing behind the lithium ion battery disrupting sector, which promises to produce cheaper and lighter batteries for EVs and other energy storage applications. It is still a peripheral market for BCI, which will bring what it deems the third largest standalone sodium chloride project in the world online by the second half of 2026 at Mardie, around 120km southwest of Rio Tinto's Dampier Salt operations. While most investors probably think about those operations as producing 'common table salt', Boshoff said the end users of Mardie's high-purity product will actually come from chemical manufacturers whose products are used to create ceramics, PVC and more – the materials that make up the containers your salt is carried in. "Recently, we've been in contact with sodium ion battery producers and that technology has advanced significantly. Currently, there are vehicles in production that's got both a lithium battery as well as a sodium ion battery in the vehicle," Boshoff said. "Of course they're very stable, the salt batteries, the sodium batteries. But also a lighter battery so (it) creates a longer range. So (it'll be) interesting to see how those elements are starting to impact the market going forward." BCI has binding offtake agreements with customers in China, Indonesia and the Japan-Korea-Taiwan region, with demand growing as industrial activity ramps up across Southeast Asia. Leading Chinese battery maker CATL has said it plans to begin mass production of an EV grade sodium ion battery by the end of 2025 and could displace as much as half the market for lower range lithium-iron-phosphate electric vehicles. SoP $837 million capped BCI is well off its 2021 highs but up around 81% over the past five years. Once a junior iron ore player, the Kerry Stokes-backed developer's journey to production has been propped up by a string of equity raises and government finance as construction costs for Mardie have risen. A DFS gave a total capital estimate of $779m back in 2021, but those numbers were quickly revised as construction costs blew through the roof post-Covid. From 2023 the firm has been working on a base case capex of $1.421bn, with a contingency outside that of $208m. It closed a $981m debt facility last year, including $490m from Canberra's Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility and $160m from Export Finance Australia. The feds will be keen to see a return on that investment after a string of busts on loans for potash projects across WA, including the collapse of Kalium Lakes and Salt Lake Potash. They had promised to deliver a high-quality sulphate of potash (SoP) product to international markets which used solar evaporation rather than the energy intensive Mannheim process, which converts lower quality muriate of potash into the higher purity SoP. Boshoff remains bullish on the need for more SoP to fuel a growing middle class in Asia consuming higher quality fruit and vegetables which need SoP to thrive. But its 140,000tpa SoP phase is rather an add-on to the main 5.35Mtpa salt operation, with Boshoff saying the company wanted to get the production process for the cursed co-product right via a long testing process. "I think it's well known in the room that there's been some difficulty in getting SoP projects up successfully. We do have a couple of advantages," Boshoff said. "Of course, we're on the coast, so from a cost of transportation perspective that gives a disadvantage. " Also SoP is a by-product of the salt production, so our main revenue will be coming from the salt itself, and if you produce (SoP) as a by-product we have the luxury of time." Port deal The other conundrum for BCI is its port terminal at Cape Preston West, which will be used at capacity just 17% of the time. That could open the door for smaller players to access the facility, with junior iron ore developers perpetually facing the challenge of accessing port space in a crowded infrastructure network dominated by BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue, Roy Hill/Hancock Prospecting and MinRes. Boshoff said so far eight proponents had delivered expressions of interest to secure berth access at the port. In recent times junior iron ore stocks have increasingly become prey for the large players. Infrastructure solutions are a key aspect of cost control, and without control over their supply chain, it's been easier for juniors like Red Hawk Mining and CZR Resources (ASX:CZR) to sell their deposits or companies into larger players looking for resource optionality like Fortescue (ASX:FMG) and Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO). "Now it's a bit of a chicken and egg for some of these operations," Boshoff said. "For them to be able to start their operation ... they have to have access first so the business model can work. They get to work out their trucking costs. So I think some of these things will take a bit of time to get off the ground. But I think certainly it creates a great avenue for this capacity." What else is going on in large cap land? The market is awash with speculation about Glencore's future plans, as the AFR reported it has been moving a string of foreign assets worth around US$30bn into an Australian company. That could open the door, again, to a potential merger with Rio, reputedly discussed last year, with the Aussie-Anglo mining giant's CEO Jakob Stausholm stepping down later this year. Stausholm had been dismissive of large-scale M&A over his tenure at Rio, preferring to focus on smaller deals in niche spaces like lithium. But his exit could herald a change in direction, with the miner equally facing pressure from some investors to collapse its dual company structure and domicile primarily in Australia, the subjected of a failed shareholder vote at the company's recent AGMs. The ASX 300 Metals and Mining index fell 1.16% over the past week. Which ASX 300 Resources stocks have impressed and depressed? Making gains MAC Copper (ASX:MAC) (copper) +23.2% Capstone Copper Corp (ASX:CSC) (copper) +12.6% Bellevue Gold (ASX:BGL) (gold) +6.3% Ora Banda (ASX:OBM) (gold) +5.7% Eating losses Coronado Global Resources (ASX:CRN) (coal) -11.1% Predictive Discovery (ASX:PDI) (gold) -8.3% Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) (lithium/iron ore) -7.2% Vulcan Energy Resources (ASX:VUL) (lithium) -5.8 Coronado sunk again as rumours swirled the embattled coal miner could fall prey to a hostile bottom of the market takeover from Czech distressed assets billionaire Pavel Tykac's Global Investments after the firm bought up a bunch of its debt on the cheap. PDI was down after the Guinean Government revoked some of its gold permits, though not the ones under its flagship Bankan deposit, and MinRes copped a hit after cutting guidance again from its Onslow Iron operation. MAC Copper meanwhile led the ASX 300 mining sector after the Cobar copper mine operator agreed to a US$1.03bn ($1.6bn) takeover from Harmony Gold.
Reuters
3 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
British stocks mixed after US court blocks Trump tariffs
May 29 (Reuters) - British equities were mixed on Thursday as a U.S. court's decision to block President Donald Trump's proposed tariffs boosted sentiment, though losses in utilities and persistent trade concerns limited the gains. As of 0952 GMT, the blue-chip FTSE 100 (.FTSE), opens new tab was down 0.05%, while the domestically focussed FTSE 250 (.FTMC), opens new tab rose 0.3%. The Court of International Trade said Trump had overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board tariffs on imports from U.S. trade partners. Markets around the globe rose following the news. The White House has appealed the decision, which could reach the Supreme Court, but investors welcomed the potential reprieve from tariff volatility that has persisted since April. The UK was the first country to secure a limited bilateral trade agreement with the U.S., maintaining Trump's 10% tariffs on British exports while expanding agricultural access and lowering U.S. duties on car exports. Luxury brand Burberry (BRBY.L), opens new tab was among the top gainers on the mid-cap index on Thursday, advancing 2%. Industrial metal miners' sub-index (.FTNMX551020), opens new tab gained 0.2% as prices of metals in London rose. Sub-index heavyweights Rio Tinto (RIO.L), opens new tab, Anglo American (AAL.L), opens new tab, Glencore (GLEN.L), opens new tab and Antofagasta (ANTO.L), opens new tab climbed between 1% and 2% London-listed shares of Atalaya Mining Copper SA rose 5%. Bond-proxy utilities (.FTUB6510), opens new tab were the biggest laggards on the blue-chip index, falling 2.5%, as the UK government bond yields inched higher on the day, tracking Eurozone peers. National Grid (NG.L), opens new tab and Severn Trent (SVT.L), opens new tab both shed more than 3%. Shares of automotive platform Auto Trader (AUTOA.L), opens new tab tumbled 13.8% to a more than one-month low after missing annual revenue estimates. Market sentiment received an additional boost after the world's most valuable semiconductor firm, Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, beat estimates for first-quarter sales. Back home, economic data showed business confidence in Britain's services sector hit a two-and-a-half-year low in the May quarter, with cost pressures rising partly due to employment tax rises.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Jim Cramer on Rio Tinto (RIO): 'I Like Rio Tinto'
We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Rio Tinto Group (NYSE:RIO) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discusses. A caller asked what Cramer thought of Rio Tinto Group (NYSE:RIO), and he remarked: 'I like Rio Tinto. I like Rio. I like the yield. I like the company. It's a globe-trotting company, so to speak. I like those guys.' Aerial view of an open pit mine, with workers extracting minerals. Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO) mines and processes various minerals such as iron ore, aluminum, and copper. Additionally, the company works on projects for materials like lithium and manages related infrastructure. Over the past year, RIO stock went down more than 14%. Moreover, back in January, when Cramer was asked about the company, he said: 'Rio Tinto is really a play on the Chinese economy and I think the Chinese economy is *glass breaking buzzer sound*.' Overall, RIO ranks 17th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discusses. While we acknowledge the potential of RIO as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than RIO and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
