A raft of articles today show the pain being felt by Australai’s nouveau riche, the iron boganaires. From the top is Clive Palmer via The Australian:
Tim Murray, managing director of Beijing-based J Capital Research, has developed fresh modelling that estimates the break-even cost for the Sino Iron mine is $US70 a tonne — well above the current iron ore price of $US55 a tonne.
Mr Murray said because Sino Iron’s magnetite ore was processed into a higher quality concentrate before being exported, the product was likely to be worth about $US60 a tonne in today’s market.
…The low iron ore price is critical to Mr Palmer because the value of the royalties the MP claims to be owed on Sino Iron’s revenue is now shrinking…
And his contract dispute with CITIC leaves open the possibility that he’ll never see expected returns or, even worse, that prices will eventually kill the project. Better late than never Tim Treadgold gives Gina Rinehart a serve:
