Winning Shipping is among the companies to have won a bid to mine one of the world’s biggest deposits of iron ore, in a deal that will further reshape capesize trading patterns.
Societe Miniere de Boke (SMB) has won a government tender to exploit blocks 1 and 2 of vast iron reserves in the Simandou mountains in the southeast of Guinea in west Africa.
SMB is a joint venture that includes a Guinean transport and logistics company, United Mining Supply; Singapore-based Chinese outfit, Winning Shipping; Chinese aluminium producer Shandong Weiqiao; and China’s Yantai Port.
The firm, created in 2014, is Guinea’s biggest bauxite exporter.
The consortium will build a 650 km railway line and a deepwater port at Matakong on the Atlantic coast.
The Simandou deposits have been estimated at 2.4bn tonnes of high-grade ore.
Winning Shipping has been growing its cape fleet dramatically in recent years, principally engaged on the growing commodity ties between West Africa and China.
