Citic Pacific’s Sino Iron venture will live for ever – as a textbook study of inexperienced management meeting Murphy’s law. The project, in Australia’s Pilbara region, has already exceeded its budget five times over. It is finally shipping ore, admittedly, and is setting a new standard of openness for Chinese state-owned groups by talking about what went wrong. But when $10bn has been sunk into a very big hole, perseverance and openness are not so much virtues as necessities.

The chairman’s statement, part of its full-year results, was refreshing. Too many SoEs seem to run corporate buzzwords through Google Translate and rearrange them. A chairman who admits more hands-on management was needed is a novelty, though cynics might read that as a promise never to invest alongside fellow-SoE China Metallurgical Group (MCC) again. MCC’s initial plan to import cheap Chinese labour into the Pilbara, for example, never stood a chance. The risk management issue will stir up bad memories for investors who remember the 50 per cent share slide that followed Citic Pacific’s $2bn currency hedge loss in 2008.

Sino Iron makes up less than a third of Citic Pacific’s assets, which include property, telecoms and steel, but it is the top priority for the management team, according to its chairman. Production this year could top 3m tonnes. To reach its 24m full capacity, more investment is needed. But Citic Pacific will not say how much or when, nor will it lay out production costs. Refining low-grade magnetite into ore on this scale admittedly faces unique challenges. Any figure is hostage to factors ranging from ore prices and labour costs to the outcome of a bitter court battle over royalties. But investors still deserve to know what rate of return the company expects. Or is this a hole so deep the only option is to keep digging regardless?