Iron ore price, page-33476

Congo is not a good decision. Project is too big. It takes too much time to implement this project. Project will be finished 2040 or later.
One of the problem for decarbonisation of the whole world is the steel industry. I would prefer to work on this topic. Moreover, 85% of the iron ore is hematite, rest is magnetite. Magnetite is concentrated and finnally sold as DR pellets or with less iron content BF pellets. Magnetite iron ore proejcts are more expensive to develop an the cash costs for producting are higher.
Steel industry want to decarbonize by using natural gas instead of coal and coke. This will happen with DRI plants, producing DRI or HBI. Biggest issue is, in blast furnaces you have a slag as by product, not in DRI plants, so you have to use very high quality ore in DRI plants. In short, hematite ore can only be processed in blast furnaces.

Two conclusions. First, the world need more magentite iron ore to support the new DRI plants. FMG should invest here. More Magnetite project, pellet plants in cooperation with steel companies. Big market for these products. This is mid term.

Second, more important, the world need a technology to transfer hematite to DRI. First, with natural gas and then later with hydrogene. The hydrogene factor is not the first priority. If you have such a technology, you produce more cheaper DRI, because, hematite iron ore is much cheaper in comparison to DR pellets. If you have the patents on this technology, you can help the steel industry to switch from coal and coke to natural gas, very very big savings of co2. From environmental point of view, this would help this planet a lot. These patents would be money printing technology and is near to FMG core business. It would be a perfect move to invest here, together with a steel company. Posco would be an example, they have developed Finex. This would be long term.

From my point of view, his would be better im comparison to invest so much money in just one project in Congo.

Mike