A machine works on blending the iron ore at Dalian Port, Liaoning province, China, on Sept 21, 2018. (Photo: Reuters)
SINGAPORE — Australia's iron ore miners emphasised on Tuesday how growing steel demand in India and Southeast Asia would help offset the stagnating market in top customer China, where they also face pressure from the state-owned buyer to lower prices and offer better terms.Already the world's second largest steelmaker, India plans to double output to 400 million tonnes by 2035-2036 from the current 168 million tonnes.
While still a fraction of China's almost one billion tons of production, the new targets will require vast additional quantities of iron ore and metallurgical coal, which in the latter case India almost entirely imports.
BHP, among the world's largest producers of met coal, expects demand in India to double by 2050, group sales and marketing officer Michiel Hovers said at an industry conference in Singapore on Tuesday. The miner has long said South Asia will be a key growth market.
Rio Tinto chief commercial officer Bold Baatar told the same conference that new steel demand in India and Southeast Asia will offset stagnation in China, where a crisis in the property sector, once the biggest steel consumer, is in its fifth year.
