China Launches World-First Plant to Extract Iron From Mine Waste

China has launched what the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) describes as a world-first industrial-scale facility for extracting iron from previously discarded mine tailings and ultra-low-grade ore. The 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 in Anshan, Liaoning province, a traditional steelmaking centre.

China is the world's largest iron ore user, absorbing more than half the global supply, and relies on imports for more than 80% of its needs, mainly from Australia and Brazil. The country holds the world's fourth-largest iron ore reserves, but most are low grade, and nearly half are too hard and costly to process with standard methods, leaving huge amounts unused.

After iron ore is mined, the usual first step separates iron-bearing minerals from waste rock using magnetism or density differences — methods that do not work when the ore has very low iron content. Researchers at CAS's Institute of Process Engineering developed a new "magnetising roasting" technique that fine-tunes the process so that non-magnetic iron minerals become magnetic, turning old waste into usable material. The technology boosts iron content from 11% in the tailings to 65% in the concentrate.

Zhu Qingshan, head of the research team, said the work traces back to experiments the late academician Guo Musun began in 1959, which were later suspended; Zhu restarted the research in 2004 under Guo's advice. According to CAS, this is the first time worldwide that low-grade iron tailings have been processed on a large industrial scale, and 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 Anshan facility, consisting of three production lines that began operating in January, now produces 2.2 million tonnes of iron concentrate a year and uses 35% less energy than comparable methods, according to an Ansteel manager. The project is part of a larger plan by Ansteel Group to reprocess 24 million tonnes of iron tailings per year, though China imported more than 1.25 billion tonnes of iron ore in 2025 — far beyond what this project alone can offset.