What Went Wrong With CITIC's Australia Ore Investment

choi

Rhiannon Hoyle, Asia Backs the Wrong Ore in Australia; High-cost magnetite looked attractive as alternative to steel until prices fell. Wall Street Journal, Sept 12, 2014.
online.wsj.com/articles/asian-investors-iron-ore-bets-fail-to-pay-off-1410411784

the first five paragraphs (I combine paragraphs 4 & 5):

"For much of the past decade, Asian investors spent billions of dollars on iron-ore deposits in the Australian Outback in an attempt to break BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto's stranglehold on the commodity.

"They bet on the wrong iron ore.

"Companies including China's Ansteel Mining Co 鞍钢 and Japan's Mitsubishi Corp have halted or scaled back plans to open up a new mining hub in Western Australia for a low-grade ore known as magnetite. Magnetite is more costly to produce than hematite, the ore typically found at BHP's and Rio Tinto's mines.

"When worries about a global shortfall in iron-ore supply drove prices of the commodity to a peak above US$190 a ton in 2011, magnetite looked attractive. * * * But a fall in iron-ore prices to a five-year low below $83 a ton is threatening those investments. The most-prominent example of an unprofitable magnetite mine is the US$10 billion Sino Iron project in Western Australia developed by Citic Pacific, recently renamed Citic Ltd, which went online last year.

Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) magnetite
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetite
(iron(II,III) oxide; ferrous-ferric oxide; Fe3O4)

(c)
(i) hematite
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematite
(iron(III) oxide;  (Fe2O3))

is ferric oxide.
(ii) hematite (n; via Latin from Greek haimatitēs resembling blood, from haima blood)
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/hematite