Simandou mine

That is a logical conclusion to draw, that if you are looking at the question from the Chinese perspective, any planners in China that are looking to the future would be, you would expect them to be seeking to diversify the sources of supply of the raw materials they need and of course we are seeing examples of that beginning.

China has invested very heavily in the Simandou iron ore mine in the Congo, which is about to, I think has come on stream.

And that is reputed to be the largest source of the purest form of iron ore anywhere in the world.

So obviously the Chinese are going to want to purchase it and could very well lead to a reduction in China's imports of iron ore from Australia.

I think I agree with what my colleagues are saying, basically.

I think before the war, the fundamentals on dry were already improving, with the capes outperforming, with the low supply growth on the capes and a lot of extra cargoes coming mainly out of West Africa, Guinea, with bauxite and Simandou-Arendor.

Then the war started and there came some extra inefficiencies to the market.

One of them is the high fuel prices, basically the high oil price, the high fuel prices actually keep a cap on the speed of the vessels, which basically kept the supply under control.

Perfect.

So we got a little bit of diverging views here on the podium already, so that's good.

So now, just to go a little bit more, and we'll come back to the fleet later, just to go a little bit on the demand side and China and Simandou.

Question for William and Karim, really, mostly.

He was head of A-Asia Pacific, um, studies for Rio Tinto.

So he's-- and he, and he, he led the, the Simandou feasibility study as just one example, um, before he became the sort of, you know, senior, senior, senior manager.

Um, you know, Simandou's like a fi-fifteen billion dollar, fifty thousand ton a day operation in Guinea.

So one of the biggest mining projects ever developed anywhere in the world, ever.

So, so for us to have him is a bit of a coup, uh, very much a coup and, um, he can just help us at this critical stage to make sure that, you know, we do the right things and we, we don't spend too much in the wrong areas, and we, we don't over-engineer the project.

So he can bring all of that experience, his, you know, twenty-odd years of, of mining experience, um, to the project.

But what it also means is that he's had enough time seeing things how, how things can be done incorrectly.

You know, I think just at Simandou itself, they spent, um, like an in-inordinate amount of money with a blank sheet of paper deciding how they can optimize the project development.