Rio Tinto freezes pay ahead of "very sobering" year ahead

In a note to staff, Walsh said “Late last year, we saw market prices continue to rapidly fall. What we see ahead is very sobering."

But he said that he felt "Rio Tinto can thrive when others falter."

But Walsh warned the giant Anglo-Australian mining company needed to shed unnecessary costs.

"If something is not essential, stop doing it," he added.

This will mean less travel and more video-conferencing, with Walsh telling underlings he had personally cancelled numerous flights from his diary and they should follow suit.

“This situation is not temporary and our industry is moving into the new normal which means we must continue to be one step ahead.”

In December, after a year of tumbling commodities prices to prices not seen for around a decade, the FTSE 100 company promised to cut capital expenditure in 2016 by a sixth, to $5bn.