China has launched a world-first industrial-scale facility to extract iron from previously discarded mine tailings and ultra-low-grade ore, turning waste into a valuable resource that can reduce its dependency on overseas supply.
According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) last Tuesday, a production line capable of processing 5.56 million tonnes of refractory iron ore and tailings per year has passed official checks and is now running steadily.
China is the world’s largest iron ore user, absorbing more than half the global supply. However, relying on imports for more than 80 per cent of its needs – mainly from Australia and Brazil – has long undermined its bargaining power and supply security.
On the other hand, China has the fourth-largest iron ore reserves, yet most are low grade, and nearly half are too hard and costly to process with standard methods. So huge amounts remain unused.
The new breakthrough aims to make those hard-to-use ores viable.
State broadcaster CCTV reported that the technology could fundamentally strengthen China’s ability to secure its own iron resources and reduce its heavy dependence on imports of the strategic commodity.
After iron ore is mined, the first step is to separate iron-bearing minerals from waste rock. The usual methods use magnetism or density differences, but they do not work when the ore has very low iron content.
Researchers at CAS’ Institute of Process Engineering have come up with a new magnetising roasting technique. In short, this fine-tunes the process so that non-magnetic iron minerals become magnetic – turning old waste into usable material.
Zhu Qingshan, head of the research team, told China Science Daily on Thursday that the technology traced back to the very founding of the institute’s predecessor – the Institute of Chemical Metallurgy.
The late academician Guo Musun began experiments as early as 1959, but the work was later suspended. In 2004, Zhu took over and restarted the research under Guo’s advice. In the early years, it was even hard to find corporate partners. Today’s mature technology, he said, was the result of a half-century scientific marathon.
According to CAS, this is the first time worldwide that low-grade iron tailings have been processed on a large industrial scale. The technology boosts iron content from 11 per cent in the tailings to 65 per cent in the concentrate.
Looking ahead, the technology could unlock the use of nearly 30 billion tonnes of refractory iron ore and around 10 billion tonnes of iron-bearing tailings across China.
The project that just passed inspection consists of three production lines, each with an annual capacity of 1.85 million tonnes. They went into operation in January in Anshan, Liaoning province – a traditional steelmaking heartland.
“The facility now produces 2.2 million tonnes of iron concentrate per year,” a manager from Ansteel, a state-owned steel giant, told CCTV on Wednesday.
While no official price details are available, the process uses 35 per cent less energy than comparable methods, which cuts costs. The project has also been included in China’s first official list of green and low-carbon demonstration projects issued by the National Development and Reform Commission.
However, this project alone will not end China’s need for imports from Australia and Brazil.
In 2025, the country imported over 1.25 billion tonnes of ore – far beyond what this single line can produce. Still, the technology turns waste tailings into a useful reserve and opens a new path forward.
According to CAS, the project is a core part of a larger plan by Ansteel Group to reprocess 24 million tonnes of iron tailings per year.
