Tom Albanese: Man of The North

As a youth, Tom Alban­ese fled a small industrial New Jersey town for Alaska.

Albanese, now 50, is the first American CEO of the venerable London-based mining giant Rio Tinto PLC (RTP-N), which last year took over Alcan Inc. in a $38-billion deal. He went to university in Fairbanks, Alaska, for degrees in mineral economics and mining engineering.

He was only 17 at the time, and Alaska beckoned because “it was about as far away from New Jersey as you could get,” Albanese explains during a recent visit to Vancouver. There was another motive, of course: Albanese was also fascinated by the outdoors – hiking, climbing, camping – and the North Country offered it all and more.

After university Albanese continued to work in mining in the Alaskan bush for more than a decade. Almost 30 years later, he ascended to the top of Rio Tinto and became part of the world’s business aristocracy. The man who had spent so much time in the northern bush was quickly plunged into the rarified world of sumptuous boardrooms and private airplanes, visiting Rio Tinto’s various holdings throughout the world.

One of those was Mon­treal-based Alcan’s huge smelter in Kitimat, which is now planning a $2-billion renovation. Albanese, a careful, precise man who quickly learned how to handle the pressure that comes with helming a mining giant (one of his first challenges on the job was to fend off a takeover bid by the world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton Ltd.) was in Vancouver in early March to speak to the Board of Trade about one of B.C.’s biggest companies and largest employers.

Despite now being based in London, England, and earning a seven-figure salary, Albanese still knows the city and province well. “If you’ve lived in Juneau and you’re involved with mining, you know Vancouver,” he explains. “It’s one of the most respected places in mining because of its exploration expertise. I used to visit it quite often in the 1980s. I still try to get through here once a year. It’s a beautiful place, and in mining, Vancouver is not exactly a hard posting.”

Albanese is also familiar with the northern part of the province, especially Alcan’s huge smelter in Kitimat, where local residents have always had a dependent – and sometimes fractious – relationship with the company that rules the town and the surrounding region. He says his time in the North Country gave him an appreciation for the kind of thinking that is prevalent in northern resource-based towns.

“There’s always that phy­sical and psychological isolation to deal with,” he says. “I think that the days when a big company could operate in an isolated town but not be part of that town are over.”Albanese says he fully acknowledges what moderni­zation will mean to Kitimat, and that he understands some of the underlying fear in the community that the aging smelter might be wound down. But upgrading the Kitimat facility, notes the CEO, will make it one of the three largest smelters in North America, which virtually guarantees it will continue operating for some time.

“I just visited the plant and it’s pretty impressive,” Albanese observes. “It’s so well taken care of that you could eat off its floors. They’re obviously proud of it, and this will allow them to lock in security so the town can plan its development.”