On March 25, the bonded crushing project for Simandou iron ore at Dalian Port officially commenced operations. With the arrival of the first shipment of iron ore at the port’s ore terminal, a new international logistics corridor linking West Africa and Northeast China was established.

The Rio Tinto-operated vessel RTM Cartier, which arrived at the port, departed from Port Mayumba last month carrying 201,500 tons of iron ore, all sourced from Blocks 3 and 4 of the Simandou project. This shipment marks the first cargo independently shipped by SimFer. Earlier this January, the first shipment of Simandou iron ore jointly dispatched by SimFer and the Winning Consortium successfully arrived at Rizhao Port.

China is the world’s largest consumer of iron ore, with imports reaching 1.26 billion tons in 2025. The Simandou iron ore project, located in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, holds some of the largest and highest-quality iron ore reserves globally.

In 2022, Chinese companies, together with the Guinean government and relevant partners, advanced the Simandou project into a substantive development phase, with plans to gradually achieve an annual production capacity of 120 million tons. In May 2024, following on-site evaluations and selection, the Simandou project team included Dalian Port among the first group of intended partner ports in China.

Dalian Port operates some of China’s first 400,000-deadweight-ton dedicated iron ore berths and was the first Chinese port to pilot bonded ore blending in 2012, setting multiple national precedents in port-side iron ore processing and international transshipment.