"World’s biggest mining project to start after 27 years of setbacks and scandals" 7 January 2024

The world’s biggest mining project, a $20bn iron ore, rail and port development in a remote corner of west Africa, is expected to start this year after a 27-year wait beset by setbacks, scandals and several false dawns.

... the project is now a partnership between Rio Tinto, the Guinean government and at least seven other companies, including five from China.

Rio Tinto will build one iron ore mine — known as the Simfer project — in partnership with a consortium led by the world’s largest aluminium producer, Chinalco.

A second mine — known as the WCS project — will be built by Baowu, the world’s biggest steel producer, in partnership with a consortium led by Singapore-based Winning International Group...

For Rio Tinto’s Bold Baatar, the complex partnership structure at Simandou provides a template for a “new era in co-development” that will be necessary to source the vast volumes of metal required to build the green economy of the future.

The ore Rio Tinto plans to extract from Simandou has an average iron content of greater than 65 per cent, among the highest in the world....

Simandou has the potential to help decarbonise the Chinese steel industry, Baatar said. A part of the ore body that we’re looking at is very suitable, we think, for direct reduction iron,” he added. “The only way the steelmaking industry globally decarbonises is if China decarbonises.”...