Hancock chairperson and billionaire Gina Rinehart on site at the Roy Hill iron-ore project, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The 67%-complete project is a joint venture with Korea’s Posco, Japan’s Marubeni and Taiwan’s China Steel. A remote operations centre will strive to keep the iron-ore quality at the level demanded by the project’s steelmaking partners, who are contracted to take more than half of the output for the life of the mine. Offtake agreements of this kind are consoling in the current low iron-ore price environment dominated by large companies like Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, of Australia, and Vale, of Brazil.