Finding the iron in iron ore

Shipping iron ore is easy. Knowing how much iron you have actually shipped is another matter – one that keeps both the exporters and the buyers awake at night because it is the iron content, not the raw tonnage, that determines the final price. Tricky as that might sound, it all comes back to the fact that every iron ore mine is different and most mines also have different grades of iron in the same pit. In one corner the ore might grade as high as 60 per cent iron, whereas another part of the same orebody might grade 57 per cent. This leads to that critical question: how much iron is actually being sold? Read more