BHP bracing for the journey ahead

By WU YIYAO (China Daily) Updated: 2015-01-09 10:46

Steelmakers in China are, however, going through a piquant situation due to oversupply and falling product prices.

According to data provided by the China Iron and Steel Association, at least a quarter of the Chinese steelmakers were operating at a loss during the first nine months of 2014.

BHP Billiton and other big mining companies had also embarked on a rapid production capacity expansion program, banking on sustained demand growth for iron ore from China.

Though China's imports have surged, prices have fallen by nearly half to under $70 a metric ton, with Chinese steel output growth slowing to around 3 percent, according to Reuters data.

Mackenzie, however, said that BHP Billiton has factored in the changing market conditions and is re-balancing its strategies after a period of massive expansion and a time when supply has struggled to keep pace with demand.

Since 2011, BHP Billiton had stopped approving new investment in major iron ore production growth, a strategy that has proved profitable, he said.

BHP Billiton, will, however, look to bolster its copper mining activities, Mackenzie said. "After rationalizing our operations, we realized that we could easily scale up our iron ore output with minimal or in some cases, hardly any investment. The key to that is to avoid major infrastructure investments, like ports, car dumpers or other cargo-handling equipment," he said.

"Copper, on the other hand, represents a totally different challenge. Unlike iron ore, copper output will fall without additional investments. So our focus in this segment is not just to halt the slide, but to scale up China's copper demand to a level that is on par or slightly more than the demand for iron ore."

Currently iron ore accounts for two thirds of BHP Billiton's sales in China, while copper is juts one sixth of the total shipments.

"This is bound to change as demand for copper is steadily growing in China and could possibly overtake iron ore at some point."

Companies like Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton are acquiring vast copper holdings with an eye on the $140 billion world market for copper, especially at a time when the market is in a state of oversupply. The global surplus in copper could reach 300,000 metric tons by this year, according to estimates from Australia's Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics.