That mine Simandau in Guinea is expected to produce 95mt. But it is ~800km from the major port in Conakry, and significantly further than Brazil from a China.
Whilst I am confident they will one day get it up and running it is going to cost a massive amount of money to build the infrastructure required to ship it.
Will they be able to bring it to market in a cost efficient manner to compete with the Australian equivalent ?
I doubt it. We have plenty of miners in Aust that can produce very high quality product including in the Pilbara for a very low cost of production.
Once RazorBack is operational in 2024 , only 240km from Adelaide - with more than 3 billion tonnes of very very high grade IO this will dwarf Simandau... This is only one project I can see in the long term that will likely be taken over by FMG & co.
The Chinese steel mills look for value, they prefer to buy Aust IO over the local stuff. Aust coking coal over the local stuff and Aust wine over the local stuff.... why, we are cheaper and better quality - plus vastly more reliable.
Simandau will hardly be the death of IO production in Aust. just another competitor that is largely Aust owned by Rio.
