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(AP) — LONDON - Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto PLC said Thursday that demand for iron ore, copper and gold rose strongly in the fourth quarter, but was cautious about the current year as governments wind down economic stimulus programs.

While markets such as copper or iron ore have been revolutionised by Chinese demand, in aluminium the revolution has been the astonishing growth of Chinese production. A relatively minor producer of 2.8m tonnes in 2000, it is now the market’s dominant force, with 17.8m tonnes of output last year, or 40 per cent of the world total, according to the International Aluminium Institute. The country in theory faces one hurdle. “Aluminium production is energy-intensive, and China is at a competitive disadvantage in terms of electric power supplies,” Mr Albanese wrote in 2007, arguing that this would lead to higher prices.

But signs of a broader recovery are harder to spot in sectors such as automotive, where carmakers are cutting back output in the face of dismal sales figures, the latest of which this week saw the market contract by about a quarter during February compared with the year before. Such reductions are, in turn, having a knock-on effect in sectors including steel, with large producers such as Tata Steel and Steel Authority of India, the nation’s two largest by sales, unveiling unexpectedly disappointing results during the past quarter. Tuesday’s data also showed further declines for companies in the country’s battered extractive industries, where recent production bans in big mining states have forced operations at companies such as the iron ore arm of London-listed Vedanta Resources to all but stop completely, pending legal reviews.

Using advanced electron diffraction techniques, the scientists discovered that orbital fluctuations in iron-based compounds induce strongly coupled polarizations that can enhance electron pairing—the essential mechanism behind superconductivity.

Quite ironically, at the dawn of celebrating 100 years since the end of the industrial revolution in Australia, the country is now in what is feared to be the final chapter of its manufacturing era. The automotive assembly industry in Australia has played a key role in transforming the nation into the developed nation that it is today.

Indonesia wants to have 63 processing and refining plants for minerals such as copper, lead, bauxite, iron, nickel and manganese by 2017, a senior government official said.

New technologies, including capacitor battery technology, lithium titanate oxide, nickel-iron, and solar thermal, are swelling the pipeline of advanced energy storage projects.

"You can map out a picture of at least a decade of strong growth for emerging nations," he says. "At Rio Tinto, whether it's iron ore, copper, aluminium, uranium, coal or a number of industrial minerals including diamonds, I think it's a pretty good story."

Rio has gained an earlybird advantage in two mining frontiers, west Africa and Mongolia, where it is building iron ore and copper mines that should serve the market for decades.