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"Australia's iron ore is mainly distributed in Western Australia." Fan Heng, Fan's father, said, "But with all due respect, if it is exploited, Jiangnan Province will have to invest a lot of money." ”

Iron ore mines are found in every state in Australia, and the state with the most iron ore mines is Western Australia.

Western Australia is home to more than ninety percent of Australia's total iron ore discoveries, mainly in the Pilbara region. There are a total of thirteen mines in the region, six of which are operated by Hamersley, Rio Tinto's subsidiary in WA, two by Rob River and five by Broken Mountain, also known as BHP Billiton. In addition, there are iron ore mines near Coolie Yanabin and Cockatoo Island in Western Australia.

Near Port Hedland in Western Australia, BHP owns an iron refinery.

The discovery of iron ore in Western Australia was also a very fortuitous and legendary event at that time.

In October 1952, at the age of 43, he flew a single-engine Auster in a small single-engine aircraft with his wife Hobb to Perth, the capital of Western Australia. He is a small farmer in Western Australia and a veteran pilot. For the sake of his family's ranch business, he had to fly in the sky a lot.

Over the Hammersley Mountains, thick cumulonimbus clouds suddenly flanked the small plane from all sides. The clouds ahead were too high for the small plane to cross, and the same thick clouds cut off their route back.

This is a contest of life. The only way out is to go down and fly below the clouds. But the clouds were getting lower and lower, almost touching the earth, and then Hancock flew into the huge canyon. He was familiar with the area, and deep in the canyon was the rushing Turner River, a natural diversion route.

This is a wild place that white Australians have never set foot in. In the midst of the rainstorm, Hancock piloted the plane cautiously, flying almost close to the treetops. At this moment of crisis, Hancock was shocked to find that under the washing of the torrential rain, the gorge walls on both sides still showed a red luster, a special red, almost brown and rusty. Hancock, who was familiar with the mines, immediately realized that these were exposed iron ores, and they were now flying in a canyon made of real copper walls!

He was thrilled by the discovery. It seems that God deliberately chose a special moment to give a heavy gift to the petrel in the storm. What Hancock saw was the largest iron ore ever discovered on Earth.

Cook against the storm when. High-grade iron ore mining in the Mesabee Mountains of Minnesota, USA, has been depleted. This big iron mine. It is one to one to one and a half kilometers wide. One hundred and fifty meters thick and one hundred and eighty kilometers long. The ore contains more than 70% iron, so no treatment is required prior to smelting. It can be fed directly into the furnace. And it's not far away. It is Pennsylvania's anthracite coal mine that provides sufficient energy for smelting.

Mei can become a real "Meshabi" (Indian word for "giant"). It is the Meshabi iron ore that is found.

This disastrous news. This caused the West to panic.

At that time, the Australian government was very resolute on the iron ore issue. Make it clear that the Australian Metro mine will never allow the slightest export!

Such a strong sense of self-preservation. Strongly iron deficiency from Australia. Experts and politicians are convinced. Iron ore is a scarce resource in Australia. Therefore, it must be used exclusively in domestic construction. It must not be exported.

After the discovery of iron ore by Hancock. Perseverance began in the preliminary work. He followed the veins. At least more than 100 kilometers of land have been carefully surveyed and explored. And he extracts specimens of ground ores. After repeated inspections. Its purity is even higher than that of the United States. This means that the metro ore can be fed directly into the smelting furnace to become steel!

But he was soon disappointed, and politicians in Perth and Canberra simply did not believe that a farmer from the bush with only a secondary school education could find high-grade iron ore in the barren Australia, which had been sentenced to death by experts.

At that time, Hancock had to obtain a concession granted by the government to the discoverer, and before that, he could not even tell anyone about his discovery, otherwise his own rights as the discoverer would not be safeguarded. The problem was that not only did the government not believe that he had discovered high-quality iron ore, but under the law at the time, both the federal and Western Australian governments strictly banned the mining of new iron ore in an attempt to achieve the government's tight control over the "depleted" iron ore resources. Hancock had a hard time getting the Discoverer's concession.

Luckily, Hancock is not only a persistent man, but also a wealthy man. Not only did he support all the exploration out of his own pocket, but he also made a lot of investments in parliamentary lobbying. The bitterness of dealing with the bureaucracy was well felt not only by Hancock, but also by later legislators, who criticized the incompetence of the government at the time as one of the repertoire on various occasions in the memory of Hancock.

Eight years later, the federal government officially recognized Hancock's development privileges in the Pilbara region as a discoverer. But the capital required to develop an iron ore mine within a radius of hundreds of kilometres is by no means affordable for a single farmer, or even Australia's small economy.

After countless encounters and blindings, Hancock finally got to work. Sir Dukan, CEO of mining giant Rio Tinto, has made a personal decision at his London headquarters and can give it a try.

What moved them was that it was Hancock who persuaded them that he only needed to extract the royalties after the fact, and if there were no deposits there, Rio Tinto would have nothing to lose.

After Hancock took them to the site several times, Rio Tinto finally made up its mind. Rio Tinto negotiated a condition with Hancock that Hancock and his relatives and friends would completely withdraw from mining in the area, and that in return and compensation, Rio Tinto would give Hancock a royalty of 2.5 percent of its annual mineral sales. This remuneration, in the year of mining, amounted to 25 million Australian dollars.

In hindsight, it was not a win-win deal. Hancock does not have to make any investment in development, and can sit on a high annual concession, while Rio Tinto ensures that he has full control over the development project. Years later, some of his peers joked with Sir Dukan, "You are so stupid that we wouldn't have done this if we had paid such a high royalty to Hancock." ”

Sir Dukan immediately retorted, "So you don't have a big iron mine like us!" ”

Hancock's sudden riches are natural in the eyes of Australians. After all, he made irreplaceable achievements for Australia to take off the hat of poor iron ore households, and it was in a very difficult political environment that he used his own funds and the funds of relatives and friends to carry out geological and political exploration at his own expense.

Hancock's flight log shows that he spent more than 7,000 flight hours on prospecting, and was seen by Australians not only as a lucky hero of fortune, but also as a persistent pioneer of the nation.

Hancock's discovery has made the force, the achievement of BHP Billiton, and the achievement of Australia's large and small iron ore producers, but from this point of view, the mining area of Western Australia has basically been carved up, and the two behemoths of Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton are the overlords of Australian iron ore.

If you want to develop a new area, how easy is it? The cost of buying mining rights alone is not large, but the amount of money needed to build a railway for transportation in the mining area and a port to the sea is a huge one.

"We can invest 100 million dollars in Australia to build mines, and in the long run, it is worth it." Fan Heng said to his son.

"Our Jiangnan Province is very determined!" When Boss Zhu and several other members of the Standing Committee heard Fan Heng's words, they were immediately very interested.

Therefore, it will arouse their concern, which is nothing more than that the country is currently pulling investment and engaging in construction, why did the Jiangnan Provincial Cocktail Club think of going out overseas to invest in a unique way? Obviously, there is something that does not conform to the current situation.

"Three dollars, at most, can only buy small mines, if you want to have a big development, it is far from enough." Who knew that after listening to Fan Heng's description, Fan Wuxian said something that shocked everyone, "If you want to deal with Australian iron ore, it is absolutely useless without 10 billion dollars!" ”

"You father and son, you don't take money!" A member of the Standing Committee shook his head with a smile and sighed.

How much can 300 million dollars do at home?

In the case of the restructuring of large state-owned enterprises such as the Jiangnan Woolen Mill, 200 million yuan is enough, and 300 million US dollars can support more than a dozen such large state-owned enterprises to move from the crisis to a stable development direction.

And if we want to support more than a dozen large state-owned enterprises to stand up again, we can basically set off a province's economy into a small **, at least at the end of the year, the economic statistics will look much better, not to mention what the concept of 10 billion US dollars is.

Fan Heng said solemnly, "Be prepared for danger in times of peace, the domestic iron ore taste is poor, the price is high, and the reserves are also limited, considering that in the next ten years or decades, China will embark on the road of rapid development, the demand for steel is increasing day by day, and the supply of iron ore will increase a lot." Based on this consideration, we believe that it is necessary to engage in overseas mineral development at an appropriate time. In fact, if we succeed in opening a mine in Australia, we can save more than half of the current cost of iron ore procurement, and the iron ore is of high taste and easy to smelt. ”

After listening to Fan Heng's words, Boss Zhu said, "Well, we didn't consider this kind of thing before, but since Comrade Fan Heng proposed it, it is necessary to discuss it." After all, this idea, although it seems a bit advanced, but we also have to take into account that some resources will be less and less because of overexploitation, steel is the skeleton of a country, we should have a forward-looking look at this issue, with a strategic vision. ”

Everyone in the meal nodded in agreement, all said that it is very necessary, although the mention of steel as the key link is not necessarily correct, but if you want to become a big country, the steel industry is a topic that cannot be avoided.

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