A Chinese court has jailed Sun Zhaoxue, the former president of state-owned metals producer Aluminum Corporation of China (Chinalco), for 16 years for graft, the court said on Tuesday.

Sun resigned in 2014 after the government started investigating him for suspected corruption. He had also stepped down as chairman of Chinalco's listed unit Chalco, which is Rio Tinto's largest shareholder, holding around 10 per cent of its capital.

Last month, Rio signed a preliminary deal to sell its stake in Guinea's Simandou project to Chinalco.

China, the world's largest iron ore consumer, provides an obvious market for Simandou, which Guinea is counting on to spur economic growth after the West African country was hit by a crippling Ebola epidemic.

"This is a very positive event for the project, but we still have long months of work and significant challenges to overcome for the effective relaunching of the project," Guinea's mining minister Agdoulaye Magassouba said in a statement.

Rio has a 46.6 per cent stake in Simandou , while Chinalco has 41.3 per cent and the Guinea government 7.5 per cent.

In 2009, Rio walked away from a tie-up with Chinalco, which was to have spent $US19.5 billion to boost its Rio stake to 18 per cent but the proposal faced strong opposition from some shareholders and regulators.