Guinea pushes Simandou on iron ore exports to feed China’s ‘green steel’ mills

Shipping services in Guinea are being upended as the West African country ramps up iron ore exports for China’s “green steel” production lines to take advantage of much higher prices.
Vessels that usually ship bauxite from Guinea have been diverted to iron ore to maximise exports before heavy seasonal rains grind production to a halt, according to international shipbroking and maritime research firm Ifchor Galbraiths.
Analysts say that shoring up supplies from Guinea helps China with its broader push to diversify away from Australian and Brazilian iron ore.
Guinean authorities are pressing joint venture partners at the Simandou megaproject to scale up iron ore shipments to China, demanding they more than double flows to 4 million tonnes per month before the heavy rains start.
The pressure falls directly on the project’s two main operators.
The first is Baowu Winning Consortium Simandou (BWCS) – led by majority stakeholder China Baowu Steel Group alongside partners Winning International Group and Weiqiao Aluminium – which is developing blocks 1 and 2.
The second is Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto’s Simfer joint venture, which holds blocks 3 and 4 alongside Aluminum Corp of China (Chinalco).

Guinea’s wet season runs from May to October and threatens to disrupt mining and logistics with intense and non-stop downpours that can last for days, with the rains usually peaking around August.
This has prompted Conakry to demand an immediate export increase.
Besides the massive Simandou deposit, which holds an estimated 3.3 billion tonnes of ore, Guinea is the world’s largest exporter of bauxite, the main raw material used for making aluminium.
The accelerated shipment of iron ore from Guinea is driven by economics and strategic supply targets.
China is buying all Simandou ore to feed its cleaner steel manufacturing and reduce its reliance on Australian and Brazilian imports, which currently account for up to 80 per cent of its seaborne supply.
The high-grade resource holds an estimated 65 per cent iron content. It is often called “green ore” because its extreme purity helps cut carbon dioxide emissions in global steelmaking.
Although weak global demand dragged bauxite down to about US$67 per tonne in May, iron ore delivered to Chinese ports stayed well above US$100 per tonne, maintaining a trend seen this year to date.
Mining operators are rushing to lift Simandou’s output to capture these higher margins.
Rio Tinto’s Simfer port facility is only 75 per cent complete and lacks three ship loaders so to help boost output, BWCS agreed to route Simfer’s ore through its own terminal.
“Whilst the production and transportation costs of bauxite and iron ore remain broadly similar in Guinea, iron ore prices currently exceed those of bauxite by more than US$40 per tonne, creating materially stronger margins for operators and royalties for the country,” Ifchor Galbraiths noted.

Together, the operators loaded six vessels in April for nearly 1.8 million tonnes, exceeding the entire first-quarter export volume, according to Ifchor Galbraiths.
“Simandou is increasingly shifting from a long-term infrastructure story into an active market-moving export flow,” Vincent Lemaitre, head of dry research at Ifchor Galbraiths, said last month.
Lemaitre added that what mattered now was the pace at which operational bottlenecks were being removed across rail, port and marine logistics.
“The implications for Atlantic iron ore and dry bulk markets could become materially larger than many currently anticipate,” he said.
The Simandou venture is China’s largest infrastructure commitment in recent years, with state giants Baowu and Chinalco pumping billions of dollars into a US$20 billion integrated development to build a 650km (404-mile) railway and a deep-water port.
When the project is fully operational, the two consortiums will ship a combined 120 million tonnes per year.
However, the diversification into iron ore alters geopolitical dynamics.
W. Gyude Moore, a distinguished fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub, a Washington-based think tank, said the new volumes out of Africa would not weaken the ability of any one supplier bloc to squeeze China on price, terms or geopolitics.
But it could slightly reduce China’s dependence on Australia or Brazil as well as give Beijing leverage, he added.
Ifchor Galbraiths said first-quarter 2026 volumes exceeded 1.5 million tonnes before surging to nearly 1.8 million tonnes in April alone, followed by consistent weekly exports of 0.6 million tonnes that put the timeline on track to potentially exceed 1 million tonnes per week in May.
Lauren Johnston, a China-Africa specialist and senior research fellow at the AustChina Institute, a Melbourne-based think tank, described the increased shipments as significant because the premium Guinean resource was bound for China’s next-generation green steel production.
“It is a new era of higher-quality steel production and high-quality steel for China’s next upgrade towards higher-quality development.”