With fatherly pride, Andrew Forrest sweeps his arm across the scene at Cloudbreak, a huge iron ore mine set in the landscape of Western Australia's Pilbara region.

The billionaire Australian mining magnate and founder of Fortescue Metals is surveying a scene of frenetic activity. Dozens of trucks are being loaded with the Pilbara's rich red dirt before a custom-built railway line takes it to the coast hundreds of kilometres away and then on to ships destined for Chinese steelmakers.

On the surface, Mr Forrest appears unconcerned over the recent collapse of a $6bn financing package from China that would have funded a quantum leap in Fortescue's iron ore production.

But a related thorny issue – a contested court action by Australia's securities regulator to have him disqualified as a company director – is a topic he would prefer not to discuss, until a decision is handed down.

The regulator alleges Mr Forrest and Fortescue misled the stock market over announcements relating to agreements with China on the investment package. But Fortescue believes the case is “a technical discussion between lawyers,” and is one it has defended vigorously.

Mr Forrest prefers to talk about the milestones Fortescue has passed.

Less than five years after drilling commenced at Cloudbreak, Fortescue has shipped more than 40m tonnes of iron ore to China. By 2011, it forecasts that Cloudbreak and the adjacent Christmas Creek mine will be producing iron ore at an annualised run rate of 55m tonnes.

Although Christmas Creek is barely off the drawing board – the mine only trucked its first iron ore five months ago – Mr Forrest is already talking about Solomon, another Pilbara “project”, that he says could lift annual production to 120m tonnes.

“There has never been a faster ramp up in the Pilbara,” Mr Forrest says in a reference to activity by his Pilbara neighbours, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, the world's second and third-largest iron ore exporters behind Brazil's Vale.

Mr Forrest's vision will certainly be welcomed by steel mills in China, Japan and South Korea that are keen to diversify their supplier base.

Fortescue is lucky to have got this far. A year ago it suffered early production setbacks over alumina impurities and then it was hit by the sharp drop in the iron ore spot price and weak demand as the steel price collapsed between November and March.

However, when the quarter ended in September it had increased its annualised production rate to 40m tonnes, allowing it to generate sufficient cash to service its $1.8bn of bonds.

Alex Passmore, head of the resources team at Patersons Securities in Perth, estimates that Fortescue will need an additional $900m of investment in order to raise production to 95m tonnes a year.

He says that a further $2.75bn will be needed to develop Solomon.

Mr Forrest agrees that to “double the size” of Fortescue with Solomon, new sources of finance will need to be found.

The $6bn Chinese financing package collapsed over a failure to agree terms, amid suggestions the Chinese group was demanding a larger equity stake in Fortescue. China's Hunan Valin has a 17.33 per cent stake in Fortescue but under a standstill arrangement has agreed not to build a stake beyond 17.55 per cent.

Fortescue has yet to rule out a fresh financing package with the Chinese, but Mr Forrest suggests capital is available from the US and Asia.

“There are lots of options,” he says, adding that relations with China, currently Fortescue's only iron ore customer, have not soured. However, Mr Forrest says the company is in talks with Japanese and Korean steel mills.

For now, Mr Forrest is delighted to prove wrong those critics who thought Fortescue would never make it this far, and points to the group's fortunate geographical position:“There is iron ore in the Congo, Brazil and India but it is the iron ore in the Pilbara, with markets in Asia tucked up under our nose, that is extremely valuable.”