Fortescue

In nineteen ninety seven, Andrew Forrest had ore samples and no money. Rio Tinto and BHP owned the Pilbara absolutely — every mine, every rail line, every port berth. Banks would not lend to him. No one in Australian mining had broken that duopoly in decades. So Forrest flew to China and did something no miner had done before. He sold iron ore that did not exist yet. He signed binding contracts with Chinese steelmakers desperate for volume. They committed to buy millions of tonnes at locked prices. Forrest walked into a bank with those contracts and said: this is my collateral. The customers had financed the mine before a single hole was drilled. The rail, the port, the processing — all built on the back of purchase commitments, not equity or debt. Fortescue's all-in cost runs fifteen to eighteen dollars per tonne. Rio and BHP operate at twenty to twenty five. Iron ore trades around one hundred dollars. At one hundred ninety million tonnes a year, the margin math is devastating — eighty dollars per tonne flowing through to profit.