Our Master Mineral

Tell people they live in the Iron Age and they will probably feel rather insulted. Call it the Steel Age and they may feel happier, but they will probably say that our times are defined not by any metal but by electrons and atoms.

In truth, as Michael Tanzer pointed out in his book The race for resources, iron ore is “by far the most important non-fuel mineral in the world today” and the iron and steel industry is “at the core of modern industrial society”. Those words were written in 1980 but are as true today. Iron remains one of the most crucial of the building blocks on which the world depends yet we hear little about it. Where does it come from? Why is it there in the first place? How much of it do we have? How long will it last?

It makes no difference that iron ore is not one mineral and comes in a range of types. People tend to have a mental picture of a heavy, rusty brown material that, like coal, comes out of the ground as lumps of various sizes or as dust. That’s true up to a point, but in fact there are dozens of ways in which iron ores differ from each other. The focus here is on ores and orebodies that contribute most to the immensely valuable seaborne trade in their products. It is in this segment of the market that Rio Tinto Iron Ore (RTIO) competes so successfully.

Leaving out China, the leading producers by country in 2005 were Australia with 21 per cent of the global tonnage, Brazil (20 per cent), and India (11 per cent). Behind them came Russia, Ukraine, US, South Africa, Sweden and Canada.

About half of global production is used in the country where it is mined. In 2005, internationally traded ore amounted to an estimated 676 million tonnes (including railed and trucked tonnage). The estimated seaborne iron ore trade in 2005 was 653 million tonnes.