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Business

Mining billionaire Clive Palmer rakes in more than $700 million from Pilbara assets

Clive Palmer's company Mineralogy earnt $204 million from the sale Pilbara mining rights. (ABC News: Kimberley Bernard)

Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer's company has brought in $730.9 million of revenue in the past year, according to Mineralogy's latest financial year report.

About $520 million came in the form of royalties and includes large payments from the magnetite operations of Chinese-owned company Citic Pacific Mining, south of Karratha in the Pilbara region.

Mineralogy holds a bevy of mining rights across the Cape Preston area and made an additional $204 million in the last financial year, selling one of its subsidiary companies Balmoral Iron to Citic in late 2021.

The sale of Balmoral Iron entitles Citic, a large Chinese conglomerate, to mine an additional 1 billion tonnes of magnetite ore.

Citic already has the rights to mine 2 billion tonnes of ore after acquiring Sino Iron and Korean Steel from Mineralogy for $US415 million.

The original deal has seen Mr Palmer's company earn close to $1 million in royalties a day or about $US1.4 billion as of last year.

Citic Pacific's Sino Iron mine is located in the Pilbara region in Australia's north-west. (Supplied: Citic Pacific)

A decade of litigation

Mineralogy and Citic have been locked in more than a decade of litigation across several court actions.

The latest involved Citic wanting to acquire land from Mineralogy for a tailings dam and to store waste as it looked to expand its mining operations.

Mr Palmer wanted a $750-million payment from Citic for land access.

Justice Kenneth Martin, when making a decision on the latest matter earlier this month in the Supreme Court of WA, reflected on a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth where the title character said he would "fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked".

He described the "battle" between the two as a seemingly never-ending civil litigation war.

"A fog of war that has prevailed for too long between the Sino Iron Project parties has seen them all behave towards each other in surprisingly uncommercial ways over time," Justice Martin said.

"By that mutually hostile conduct, they now expose to some jeopardy the health of a precious project goose that has laid golden eggs for many."

Citic positive about outcome

Justice Martin ultimately rejected Citic's attempts to acquire the land through the court.

But Citic has been positive about the outcome, finding that while it was not financially or operationally optimal, there was now a pathway for it to seek approval for a mine pit extension.

Mr Palmer is currently running legal action against the WA and federal governments over state legislation passed in 2020 to curtail a compensation claim by the billionaire over mining tenements.

The case is set for a management hearing later this month.

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