Twenty years ago, Fortescue was created to address a gap in the marketplace. Today, we are the world’s fourth largest iron ore producer, valued at more than A$70 billion. Since 2013, our loyal shareholders have received over A$32 billion in dividends.
Dino Otranto
Fortescue Metals Chief Executive Officer
Located 145 kilometres south of Port Hedland is Fortescue’s first magnetite operation, Iron Bridge, which incorporates the North Star and Glacier Valley magnetite ore bodies. It signifies Fortescue’s entry into the high grade segment of the iron ore market, providing an enhanced product range while also increasing annual production and shipping capacity.
The Belinga Iron Ore Project in Gabon is Fortescue’s first iron ore project outside of Australia. We achieved our first shipment from Belinga in December 2023, marking the first time Fortescue has exported iron ore from a port outside of Australia. A major exploration and drilling campaign continues to ramp up which is providing important insights that will help ensure we set this project up for future success.
Fortescue began as an exploration company and we still firmly believe that early stage exploration is the key to unlocking significant value. We hold the largest tenement portfolio in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The resources in both the Western Hub and Eastern Hamersley include significant amounts of high iron content bedded iron ore, adding dry, low-cost tonnes to Fortescue’s product suite. In the critical minerals portfolio, Fortescue is ramping up exploration activities with a key focus on copper, rare earths and lithium.
We have drilling programs underway in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Kazakhstan with another program commencing in Peru. We are also conducting exploration activities over several other project areas in Latin America and pegging new tenure in Canada.
Fortescue released its world leading decarbonisation roadmap in September 2022, which aims to reduce operating costs by eliminating expenditures in diesel, natural gas and carbon offsets. Our decarbonisation plan includes the deployment of an additional 2-3 gigawatts of renewable energy generation and battery storage, in addition to the deployment of a green mining fleet and locomotives.
The Pilbara Energy Connect project, together with the Chichester Solar Gas Hybrid Project, will deliver 25 per cent of our stationary energy requirements from solar power by FY25, enabling renewable electricity generated at any of Fortescue’s sites to move between our operations in Port Hedland, Iron Bridge, Cloudbreak, Christmas Creek, Solomon and Eliwana, via over 500km of transmission lines. We have already built 320 kilometres of transmission lines to connect Solomon to Iron Bridge through to Port Hedland and are on track to commission a 100-megawatt solar farm near our Iron Bridge operations by the middle of 2024.