Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill mine has paid down a $10 billion debt and has declared a maiden dividend of $475 million just five years after making its first iron ore shipment out of Port Hedland in Western Australia.

Roy Hill chief executive Barry Fitzgerald revealed on Wednesday that the mining operation founded and controlled by Australia’s richest woman had paid off the $US7.2 billion ($10.03 billion) debt funding package that had enabled the project to get off the ground.