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Summary Australian Gina Rinehart could soon become the world's wealthiest woman.
She will become the worlds wealthiest woman after amassing an $18 billion fortune from mining and media investments, Forbes magazine says in its latest list of the wealthiest people in Australia.The 57-year old widow saw her fortune almost double after a deal signed last month that will see South Korean steel giant POSCO take a 15 percent stake in her Roy Hill iron ore mine in Western Australias Pilbara iron belt.The deal valued the project at $10 billion, boosting Rineharts fortune dramatically. In the next few years, Rinehart also has plans to expand her iron ore operations and develop two coal collieries.If commodity prices hold up, Rinehart could challenge Christie Walton, worth $24.5 billion, as the worlds richest woman, Forbes said.Walton is the widow of John Walton, one of the sons of Sam Walton, the founder of retail chain Wal-Mart Stores.For now, Rinehart will have to be content with being the Asia-Pacific regions wealthiest woman, based on Forbes tally.Rinehart is the daughter of Lang Hancock, an Australian prospector credited with discovering giant deposits of iron ore in the 1950s that now make up Australias largest export base.China alone relies of Australian iron ore for nearly half its imports of the key steel making ingredient, and Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also are big buyers for their steel mills.Compared with other ultra-rich like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebooks Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, the source of most Rineharts wealth is downright low-tech.Iron ore is just extracted from giant pits resembling excavation sites found in the 500,000-square-kilometer, or 190,000-square-mile, Pilbara, the single largest source of iron ore in the world. Ore is simply churned up by bulldozers and carted in trucks to waiting open-topped rail cars.
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