Kiruna, Sweden: the mining town that is moving east at a cost of more than US$1 billion

Sweden’s northernmost city sits atop a magnetite iron ore seam slicing below it at an angle of about 60 degrees.m“The world’s biggest and most modern underground iron ore mine”, according to a company spokesman, it is also Kiruna’s largest employer, directly providing work for 1,800 of the city’s 18,000 residents. And its ore, 26 million tonnes of which is produced annually, is the world’s purest.

Rapid global urbanisation means it is unlikely to go out of fashion any time soon, particularly in China, which has a voracious appetite for the stuff and remains the world’s leading importer, from Sweden and elsewhere. 

Iron ore is used to make steel and therefore everything from paper clips to furniture to cars to skyscrapers: one trium­phant LKAB video begins with lingering aerial shots of Hong Kong’s high-rise-lined harbour.

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