{"id":115204,"date":"2025-11-03T06:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/115204\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T06:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:50:08","slug":"chinas-massive-simandou-iron-mine-in-africa-threatens-to-upend-iron-ore-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/115204\/","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s Massive Simandou Iron Mine in Africa Threatens to Upend Iron Ore Market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ArticleBodyText_articleBodyContent__17wqE typography_articleBody__3UcBa\" data-component=\"paragraph\">In April 1998, a young geologist and his team set out from the village of Moribadou and trekked for six hours through the Guinea Highlands, a densely forested plateau that spreads across four countries in West Africa. \u201cIt was extremely difficult,\u201d said Sidiki Kon\u00e9. \u201cIn front was forest. It was forest to the left and forest to the right. Behind it was the same thing. And I said \u2018how is this work possible?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleBodyText_articleBodyContent__17wqE typography_articleBody__3UcBa\" data-component=\"paragraph\">Kon\u00e9 was mapping and drilling for his employer Rio Tinto Group, one of the largest mining companies. It had recently confirmed the presence of vast quantities of iron ore \u2014 the raw material for manufacturing steel. The Simandou deposit, buried below one of the world\u2019s most biologically rich ecosystems, was first explored in the 1950s when Guinea was still a French colony. It would turn out to be one of the biggest on the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In April 1998, a young geologist and his team set out from the village of Moribadou and trekked&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[190,4177,138,607,219,82076,55709,9962,220,82077,111,139,69,82075,82078,55105],"class_list":{"0":"post-115204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-beijing","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-generic-1st-ioe-future","14":"tag-guinea","15":"tag-market-sentiment","16":"tag-markets","17":"tag-mining-industry","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-rio-tinto-plc","22":"tag-vale-sa","23":"tag-wcs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}