Laure Baratgin is one of the most important people in dry bulk shipping. As head of commercial operations at Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, she oversees a shipping portfolio tasked with moving 315m tonnes of dry commodities each year.

Transporting such a vast volume of cargo across the world’s oceans requires a fleet of about 250 bulkers ranging from newcastlemaxes and capesizes to panamaxes, supramaxes and handies.

Rio Tinto owns 17 of these, while the rest are chartered long-term, period and spot.

Baratgin estimates that this collection of owned and chartered bulkers performs in the region of 2,700 voyages each year, making Rio Tinto the world’s largest dry bulk shipper.

Bulk shipping is just part of Baratgin’s portfolio. She and her team are responsible for all of Rio Tinto’s inbound and outbound maritime logistics needs, supporting its commercial operations, including containerised bulk shipments.

“We are facilitating and supporting our buy and sell organisation on the operational part of things. Essentially this is marine logistics, as well as back office services such as digital, health, safety and environment,” she said.

It’s a hefty portfolio, but Baratgin takes this in her stride.

“That’s what makes it very interesting. For us, it is essential to get an understanding of what our stakeholders and customers need so that we can tailor our services to support the sales strategies and value proposition — at the same time, on the inbound side, working with our procurement team so that we can offer support with assets or requirements,” she told TradeWinds.

Baratgin, who holds a degree in chemical engineering, was appointed head of Rio Tinto’s commercial operations in March 2022 after a career spanning more than 20 years in the engineering and metals commodities sectors.

“I always loved science in a way to have been fascinated with what it brings in terms of progress for humankind. I wanted to be a part of it and play a role in that space,” she said.

After spending 10 years as an engineer with a French aluminium producer that was subsequently acquired by Canadian aluminium giant Alcan, which itself was later absorbed into Rio Tinto, Baratgin switched to the commercial side of the metals industry, working her way up through the ranks into senior management roles.

She made the switch because she “wanted to gain an understanding of customer needs”.

“I like interacting with people and getting an understanding of what can be developed as a solution to meet their needs. Any business can only survive or sustain if it is fulfilling customer needs. We need all suppliers, employees and communities around us to provide this product, but if we don't meet customer needs, we will be in trouble.”

When Baratgin took on her current role overseeing Rio Tinto’s marine logistics portfolio, she joined an industry that was transforming. “This is one of the reasons I was very interested in this role.”

Rio Tinto’s chartered fleet comes under its Scope 3 emissions, while its owned fleet is part of its Scope 1 emissions.

The company’s target is to reduce its CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030, relative to the 2008 baseline.

“We anticipate reaching this target by 2025, five years ahead of the International Maritime Organization mandate. We achieved 34% at the end of last year [2022],” Baratgin said.

“We don’t do anything different than the rest of the industry,” she explained when asked how the company has achieved this.

“We are making sure that we are reaching the full potential on the fuel efficiencies and consuming less fuel. We are also leveraging different sizes of vessels. Bigger sizes are more efficient in terms of fuel efficiencies.

“We are also doing some physical modifications to the vessels to reduce fuel consumption, not only ours but also the ones that we are chartering. We are also focusing on routing and weather optimisation, for which we have developed a couple of digital tools.

“We believe that there are further opportunities to continue reducing fuel consumption. The big agenda for us is to partner with our shipowners to make sure that we are reaching the full potential of consuming the least amount of fuel.”

Although Rio Tinto has gone the LNG route, with nine newcastlemax bulker newbuildings chartered from Eastern Pacific Shipping and H-Line coming into its portfolio, it is also looking at alternative fuels such as green methanol and green ammonia.

Baratgin concedes that for these fuels, the company still has concerns over engine development, fuel availability and safety, especially with ammonia.

Rio Tinto Shipping's newcastlemax bulk carrier RTM Tasman. Photo: Rio Tinto

“What are we doing is looking at alternative fuels that are available today,” she said, mentioning biofuel as one example.

“We just finished a 12-month trial using a 30% biofuel blend that provided some very promising results in terms of emission reduction on one of our vessels.”

The pricing component remains an issue: “It is something that we're always looking at because there is a high competition for biofuel and we are also very specific on the type we want to use.

“We want to use biofuel that will not come from the agricultural business in the sense that we don’t want to compete with food supplies to the world.

“That limits the availability of biofuel access to FAME, which is what we call the fatty acid methyl ester products which are used cooking oil types of biofuel.

“Technically it works, but the pricing component remains something that the overall industry needs clarity on.”

Baratgin’s role as head of commercial operations at Rio Tinto puts her at the top of the shipping game.

Despite reaching such lofty heights up the corporate ladder, she readily concedes that shipping still lacks diversity, especially when it comes to gender representation.

The former chemical engineer believes structural changes can improve this, beginning with education.

“It starts with filling the pipeline, basically at the education level, making sure that young women know about this career, have the interest and are educated and trained to be able to play a role in the industry. Then, obviously, it is going to always be giving them opportunities,” she said.

Corporate cultures, she argues, need to change to break the barriers and myths that make it harder for women to climb the corporate ladder or take seagoing jobs.

Maternity leave is one example Baratgin cites in which changes are leading to improvement.

“These types of policies change the mindset and approach towards parental leave, which has been a big hurdle for women to progress in their career and is seen as a problem when it is just an organisational issue — a planning issue, in a way.”

With more than 20 years of experience in the commodities and shipping sectors, both in engineering and management roles, Baratgin knows that women have the ability to do well in their careers, but they need to be “courageous”.

“From my perspective, I think it’s really about being there, embracing and pursuing their dreams, and not seeing that there will be barriers on the way, and not focusing in on potential hurdles. Trust in yourself, have confidence in yourself, even if you are not in full control.”