Yes, iron ore was only 10-14/ton til 2002,and you can see from the chart below that 12 of the junior miners on this chart have a cost of production at or below 12.62/ton. When ore was only 10-14/ton cost of shipping was evidently higher than cost of production and thus had to evidently be paid by buyer-but I havent seen any articles on that .

I dont know hat CWRN 's cost of production is but I would guess its rather low given Bobs always been very careful w costs.As you can see from the trommel pro calculations in the sticky the sale price of just the now over 200k tons of 0-1mm "waste" of 55.42% iron-sinter fines and fertilizer,see last 2 PR's- should exceed CWRN's cost of production to date in my estimation, thus giving CWRN-once that 200 plus k tons is sold, a negative cost of production like several of the companies.

When ore skyrocketed from 2008 onward (both China and the U.S were in a poor economic situation then)the end of Chinas dictation of the ore price, everybody was rushing to get into the business or increase production. As the articles I posted recently indicate its not that steel production has suddenly decreased-1 article said it actually increased slightly- but that supply increased faster than expected to take advantage of what for most of last year was the highest profit commodity.

NOW w ore prices unexpectedly falling-experts had predicted 250/ton by end of 2011-the higher cost producers -would be slowing or shutting production to help bring supply and demand into a reasonable curve again.That would include Chinese companies producing extremely poor ore -as low as 4% in underground mines (doc)-and such have cost of production from 100-150/ton (agmetalminer 12-13-10, recent article posted by Kubi etc).