General Industry News, page-84

@baz23 - I agree with your comments.

With respect to whether they will work out how to turn hematite into green steel - I believe that is a necessity and they will throw enough money at it to make it happen. Otherwise, there will be such a significant shortage of steel globally because there will not be enough ore to produce the worlds steel requirements.

The question is how long will it take them to find that solution, build test plants to produce that steel in that method and then work out how to do that on a commercial scale. If that solution requires hydrogen as part of that process, how long will it take before the world can produce enough green hydrogen to turn all of the worlds hematite into green steel. And even when you get to that stage, how much extra will it cost to process the hematite into a useable form and how much extra will it cost to process that into green steel.

In my mind, it has to cost more to obtain green electricity from wind/solar/hydro etc to make hydrogen and then use that hydrogen in a steel plant to make green steel, in comparison to using that green electricity with high grade magnetite in an EAF to make green steel.

Therefore, I see that there will be a window of time where high grade magnetite in EAF will be one of the few ways to make green steel. Once the other processes are developed to produce green steel from hematite, the increased cost of production will mean that there will still be a high margin payable for high grade magnetite as there is likely to be limited supply of high grade magnetite (noting the above chart and minimal ore above 68%) and the costs of producing green steel via EAF will be cheaper many than other alternatives.