Key facts
- BHP and Rio Tinto are increasingly viewing India as the next major growth engine for the global steel industry.
- This strategic focus on India aims to position the companies for a future where China's dominance in steel demand growth may wane.
- India's steel expansion is driven by rapid urbanization and significant infrastructure spending.
- BHP executives reported that their customers in India are doubling capacity.
- Rio Tinto anticipates substantial demand growth from India and ASEAN countries in the coming decade, which would offset China's plateauing demand.
Global mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto are increasingly looking to India as the next major engine of growth for the steel industry, highlighting how the world's largest iron ore producers are positioning themselves for a future in which China no longer dominates demand growth. Senior executives from both mining giants said India's accelerating steel expansion, underpinned by rapid urbanisation and heavy infrastructure spending, could help cushion the impact of slowing growth in China, which has shaped global steel markets for more than two decades through its property-led boom.
"I was recently in India. All our customers are doubling capacity," Michiel Hovers, BHP's group sales and marketing officer, said during a presentation at Singapore International Ferrous Week on Tuesday. "It's happening. It's real."
India is increasingly being viewed as the steel sector's most important growth market. The government has set an ambitious target of producing 500 million tonnes of steel by 2047 — more than three times the 165 million tonnes of raw steel it produced last year — although that would still be well below the 961 million tonnes manufactured by China.
Despite being the world's most populous country, India's per capita steel consumption remains significantly lower than China's, suggesting substantial room for expansion. Rising urbanisation, industrial development and state-backed infrastructure investments are expected to fuel demand growth for years, creating fresh opportunities for suppliers of iron ore and metallurgical coal.
"We're just in the early, early days of India's growth," Hovers said, adding that BHP was "well-positioned to support" this expansion.
Rio Tinto struck a similar note. In the coming decade, the iron ore market can expect "substantial demand growth from the Global South, especially from India and Asean" countries, Rio Tinto Chief Commercial Officer Bold Baatar said at the same event. Such growth would help offset the plateauing of Chinese demand, he said.