A PAY dispute has halted mining operations at the Baowu-led blocks of Guinea’s giant Simandou iron ore project since last week, said Reuters on Wednesday.
An estimated 3,000 workers at the mine have downed tools in what is the first strike at the Chinese steelmaker’s joint venture, the newswire added citing a source.
Blasting, loading, hauling and dumping stopped on April 28 after workers at the Baowu Winning Consortium Simandou (WCS), which operates blocks 1 and 2, accused the company of failing to implement Guinea’s new unified mining pay structure, introduced in 2025 to standardise wages across the sector.
Rail and port operations have continued. Management and workers were in talks on Wednesday, union representatives told Reuters.
A source at Baowu, the world’s largest steelmaker, confirmed the stoppage but said WCS was compliant with the government-mandated salary framework. Workers, however, are seeking parity with employees at Simfer — the Chinalco, Rio Tinto and Guinean state joint venture mining Simandou’s southern blocks 3 and 4. A government team failed to broker a resolution at talks on Tuesday.
“There is no mining activity as we speak,” a consultant to the project said. “There is a direct impact on production and they need to find a solution very quickly.”
Simandou, which holds the world’s richest untapped iron ore deposits, began exports in November after decades of delays and is expected to produce up to 120 million tons annually at peak capacity. WCS, which employed more than 10,000 workers during construction, is scaling back its workforce as production ramps up.
