BHP and Rio Tinto Eye India as Next Growth Engine for Global Steel Industry

BHP Group and Rio Tinto are increasingly looking to India as the next major engine of growth for the global 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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

Baatar estimated that the world would require roughly 950 million tonnes of new iron ore capacity over the next decade, not only to meet emerging demand centres but also to compensate for the depletion of existing mines.

He argued that analysts had repeatedly underestimated the resilience of the iron ore market by failing to fully account for supply-side risks, the declining quality of iron ore deposits and the durability of China's steel output.

The comments from BHP and Rio Tinto underscore a broader shift underway in commodity markets: while China will remain the industry's largest consumer by a considerable margin, miners are increasingly betting that the next chapter of steel demand growth will be written in India and other fast-growing economies across the Global South.