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Miners face challenge tapping copper opportunities – by James Wilson (Financial Times – January 6, 2015)

 http://www.ft.com/intl/companies/mining

The giant Chilean Escondida mine produces more copper than anywhere on earth. Some 1.2m tonnes emerge from the BHP Billiton-run facility each year. For the largest miners, Escondida also serves as a key measure for world copper output.

To meet global demand over the next decade, the industry “will have to add the equivalent of a new Escondida every 15 months”, says Jean-Sebastien Jacques, head of copper at Rio Tinto, which owns a minority stake in the mine. First Quantum, a mid-tier copper miner, says that if China, India and Brazil were to reach EU levels of copper use by 2020, it would imply nine new Escondidas.

Such predictions explain why big UK miners are talking up their growth potential in copper, even though worries over Chinese demand have driven the price of the metal to its lowest since 2010.

Both Rio and BHP believe the copper market is oversupplied now but will tighten from 2018, with growing deficits. “The copper story remains very strong,” says Mike Henry, BHP’s president for marketing.

Some of the UK’s pure-play copper miners are investing heavily in growth. Antofagasta expects to lift annual output from its Chilean mines from 700,000 tonnes last year to 900,000 tonnes by 2018. Kaz Minerals is building two mines in Kazakhstan.

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Iron Ore Extends Drop to Five-Year Low as China Economy Weakens – by Jasmine Ng (Bloomberg News – December 22, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Iron ore sank to the lowest level since 2009 as supply exceeds demand and China, the biggest user, contends with its weakest expansion in almost a quarter century.

Ore with 62 percent content delivered to Qingdao, China, retreated 1.8 percent to $67.90 a dry metric ton, data compiled by Metal Bulletin Ltd. showed. That’s the lowest since June 3, 2009, and extends this year’s slump to 50 percent.

The steel-making raw material is headed for the biggest annual loss in at least five years as BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), Rio Tinto Group and Vale SA (VALE5) expanded output, betting increased production will boost revenue and force less competitive mines worldwide to close. Gripped by a property downturn and excess capacity, China is set to grow 7.4 percent this year, the slowest full-year expansion since 1990. Australia cut its price estimate for next year by 33 percent as a surplus builds.

“The falling price this year has been far deeper than anyone anticipated,” Andrew Hodge, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie Ltd. in Sydney, said before today’s prices were released. “China has had weaker than expected demand from its own residential property sector. For the big three, they have the lowest cost operations so there’s no reason to stop producing,” he said, referring to BHP, Rio and Vale.

The market needs to absorb a surplus of about 110 million tons next year, almost double the 60 million tons in 2014, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimated in October. The bank forecasts a price of $80 next year.

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After conquering iron ore, BHP and Rio move to dominate in copper – by James Regan (Yahoo Finance/Reuters – December 14, 2014)

http://finance.yahoo.com/

SYDNEY, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton are amassing vast copper holdings in a push to capture a greater chunk of the $140 billion world market, apparently aiming to squeeze out high-cost producers just as they did in the global iron ore business.

Separately and in joint ventures, Rio and BHP intend to mine millions of additional tonnes of copper, despite seeing an oversupplied market for the next few years.

“For both companies, this is about wielding the greatest influence possible over the global marketplace,” said Gavin Wendt, senior resources analyst for Sydney-based consultants MineLife.

“Having said that, unlike in the highly concentrated iron ore space where the focus is squarely on one market owned in large part by Rio and BHP – China, copper is sold much more widely, leaving room for smaller producers to stay in the game,” Wendt said.

Several smaller producers contacted by Reuters declined to comment, saying it was too early to gauge the impact of the expansions. There have been no suggestions that BHP and Rio are working in concert to seize overriding control of global copper supply.

A worldwide supply surplus of 300,000 tonnes is forecast in 2015 by Australia’s Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics, equivalent to half a year’s output by South Korea.

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Iron ore won’t reach $US100 per tonne again, says BHP Billiton – by Philip Wen (The Age – December 12, 2014)

http://www.theage.com.au/business

Shanghai: Mining giant BHP Billiton says iron ore prices are unlikely to eclipse $US100 a tonne again, with expectations of steel consumption growth in China slowing further next year.

“I’ve learnt never to say never and there’s always short-term variations, but I think that if you use basic economics … certainly $100 seems high,” BHP’s president of iron ore Jimmy Wilson told reporters in Shanghai on Thursday.

“It’s hard to see that significant bump [in demand] that we’ve seen coming from China happen again.” BHP’s senior management group, including chief executive Andrew Mackenzie, was in Shanghai to celebrate the shipping of its one billionth tonne of iron ore to China.

The first shipment departed from Port Hedland in 1973. “It took nearly 30 years for BHP Billiton to ship 100 million tonnes of iron ore to China and then only 12 more years to reach the one billion tonne milestone,” Mr Mackenzie said.

The milestone was testament to China’s extraordinary rate of development, he said. At current rates the next 1 billion tonnes milestone would take just five years to reach.

But though imports into China have surged, prices have nearly halved, dropping under $US70 a tonne for the first time in five years. The drop comes amid a supply glut brought on by aggressive expansion by major miners Rio Tinto, BHP and Vale – even as Chinese economic growth cools.

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Mining’s ‘Cash Machine’ Promise Fades as Prices Crater – by Jesse Riseborough (Bloomberg News – December 8, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) and Rio Tinto Group run the risk of taking on additional debt as a plunge in commodity prices threatens their ability to keep a promise of returning more cash to shareholders.

As the world’s two biggest mining companies reiterate pledges to bolster returns, a near five-year low in iron ore and coal prices raises the specter both will need to borrow to meet their dividend commitments. Along with rivals Glencore Plc (GLEN) and Vale SA (VALE5), the two companies are largely responsible for the supply glut that’s putting downward pressure on prices.

While investors demanded higher industry returns after $1 trillion was spent on acquisitions and new mines in the past decade, the prospect of companies “robbing Peter to pay Paul” doesn’t sit well with Clive Burstow, an investment manager at Baring Asset Management, which oversees $60.5 billion.

“If they start leveraging up the balance sheet just to give investors back some money, I’m not a great fan of that,” said Burstow, who has been reducing holdings of BHP and Rio this year. “That effectively means they are banking on there being higher commodity prices in the future.”

If current commodity prices prevail, BHP faces an estimated $5.4 billion shortfall to meet a forecast $6.6 billion dividend payout for the fiscal year ending June 30, according to Liberum Capital Ltd. mining analyst Richard Knights.  That means the prospect of any additional return through a buyback is “very low,” he said. Rio’s estimated dividend shortfall is $1 billion next year, Knights said.

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BHP Turns to Fertilizers in Search for Growth – by Chuin-Wei Yap (Wall Street Journal – December 11, 2014)

http://online.wsj.com/home-page

BHP Executive: Potash Seen as Strategic Focus for China Growth

SHANGHAI—Global mining giant BHP Billiton Ltd. is likely to raise the profile of fertilizers among its suite of products as it hunts for resources to tap longer-term growth in China.

The Anglo-Australian miner said Thursday it is focusing on potash as an area of strategic growth in China, adding to four key markets— iron ore, oil and natural gas, copper and coal—that the company had identified earlier this year as a slimmed-down slate designed to help BHP concentrate on getting better returns for investors.

“Potash can be our fifth pillar,” said Mike Henry, president of BHP’s health, safety and environment marketing and technology.

BHP owns the giant Jansen potash development in western Canada that could increase global supply of the fertilizer by almost 15%. The company in 2010 had also made an abortive $39 billion bid for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, which the Canadian producer rejected. Potash is seen by farmers as a more attractive resource as it produces more nutrients in plants compared with other fertilizers.

“Diets will continue to shift, requiring more agricultural product. That will mean you will need more fertilizer,” Mr. Henry said at a BHP event. “China will continue to be a big part of that picture.”

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Mining’s ‘Cash Machine’ Promise Fades as Prices Crater – by Jesse Riseborough (Bloomberg News – December 8, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) and Rio Tinto Group run the risk of taking on additional debt as a plunge in commodity prices threatens their ability to keep a promise of returning more cash to shareholders.

As the world’s two biggest mining companies reiterate pledges to bolster returns, a near five-year low in iron ore and coal prices raises the specter both will need to borrow to meet their dividend commitments. Along with rivals Glencore Plc (GLEN) and Vale SA (VALE5), the two companies are largely responsible for the supply glut that’s putting downward pressure on prices.

While investors demanded higher industry returns after $1 trillion was spent on acquisitions and new mines in the past decade, the prospect of companies “robbing Peter to pay Paul” doesn’t sit well with Clive Burstow, an investment manager at Baring Asset Management, which oversees $60.5 billion.

“If they start leveraging up the balance sheet just to give investors back some money, I’m not a great fan of that,” said Burstow, who has been reducing holdings of BHP and Rio this year.  “That effectively means they are banking on there being higher commodity prices in the future.”

If current commodity prices prevail, BHP faces an estimated $5.4 billion shortfall to meet a forecast $6.6 billion dividend payout for the fiscal year ending June 30, according to Liberum Capital Ltd. mining analyst Richard Knights.

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BHP Billiton spin-off named South32 – by Jamie Smyth (Financial Times – December 8, 2014)

http://www.ft.com/intl/companies/mining

BHP Billiton ended speculation about the name of its new spin-off company that will hold up to $15bn in non-core assets, calling it South32.

The Anglo-Australian resources group said the name of the new company reflected the fact that most of its assets are located in the southern hemisphere linked by the 32nd parallel line of latitude. It was chosen following the suggestion of an employee, said the company.

“Our heritage and the places in which we operate are an important part of our identity,” said Graham Kerr, chief executive elect of South32.

“While South32 is grounded in the southern hemisphere, we will retain our global reach and ambition as we seek to exceed the expectations of a global shareholder base.”

South32 will have a primary listing in Australia as well as a secondary listing in South Africa and a standard listing in London.

BHP is in the midst of a major corporate restructuring designed to simplify the group and boost profitability. It is bundling a swath of non-core assets into a separate diversified mining company, the “newco”, which it initially proposed to list only on stock exchanges in Australia and South Africa. But following protests from UK investors it changed course.

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BHP rethinks Olympic Dam – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – November 25, 2014)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

BHP Billiton has outlined new plans to turn the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia into the world’s second-biggest copper mine and potentially the world’s biggest uranium mine, in a big-ticket expansion that could see extra production at the start of next decade.

The plans, which BHP hopes to start exploring in earnest this year, are a big pullback from a $US30 billion open pit expansion of the giant copper-uranium-gold deposit shelved in 2012.

But they are the strongest indication since then that BHP is still serious about a big expansion of the massive Olympic Dam deposit that has been talked about since BHP acquired the mine in its 2005 takeover of WMC Resources. If the expansion goes ahead, it represents an extra $US3bn ($3.5bn) of potential annual revenue for BHP at current copper prices.

In presentations to analysts and media in Sydney yesterday, BHP chief financial officer Peter Bevean revealed the mining giant was targeting an underground mine expansion that would start producing in 2021-22 and ramp up to copper production of more than 450,000 tonnes a year by 2024.

This is more than double the 184,000 tonnes of copper Olympic Dam produced in 2013-14, but is well down on the 750,000 tonnes a year previously flagged under boomtime plans for the world’s biggest open-pit mine.

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Flooded Mine Bolsters BHP’s Plan for Potash, CEO Says – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – November 24, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The flooding of a mine owned by the world’s biggest potash producer is confirmation for BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP)’s Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mackenzie of the wisdom of his company’s planned move into the industry.

“These sorts of factors, combined with continued economic growth and demand for potash all conspire, if you like, to bring toward us the time when a new mine is required,” Mackenzie said in an interview in Sydney. “We have the lowest cost mine that would be useful to bring into the market at that stage.”

According to Mackenzie, no major new mines have begun production since the 1970s and the halt of operations at Uralkali’s Solikamsk-2 mine, which accounts for 3 percent of world supply, is a sign of the vulnerability of supply — just as the need to feed a booming global population spurs demand.

BHP is looking to build its Jansen project in Canada’s Saskatchewan province sometime in the next decade, though Mackenzie is cautious about giving an exact timeline. Spending of $3.8 billion has been approved so far on Jansen, including mine and service shafts, and Citigroup Inc. (C) forecasts the whole project may cost $16 billion.

“We do know we have to wait for the market to come towards us, but once those shafts are complete, we are only three to four years — at most — from first potash,” Mackenzie said yesterday in the interview.

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COLUMN-BHP, Rio were right on iron ore demand, wrong on supply – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.K. – November 24, 2014)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Nov 24 (Reuters) – What was lacking at BHP Billiton’s annual meeting was an admission that what has effectively happened with iron ore is that the company’sshareholders are subsidising the profits of Chinese steel mills.

Instead, what Chairman Jac Nasser told the media after the AGM on Nov. 20 was iron ore prices were “not inconsistent with the expectations we had built into our long-term investment”. Both Nasser and Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie were keen to emphasize the productivity successes at the iron ore business, saying it remains one of BHP’s main profit drivers.

That may well be true, but the message from the executives at last week’s AGM doesn’t quite tally with what BHP was saying in 2011, when it was approving the massive expansion of its iron ore operations in Western Australia.

It was around this time that BHP, its Anglo-Australian rival Rio Tinto, newcomer Fortescue Metals Group and top iron ore miner Brazil’s Vale were all making decisions to radically boost output of the steel-making ingredient.

This unprecedented capacity expansion was based on the two-pronged view that China, which buys about two-thirds of seaborne iron ore, would continue its rapid growth for decades to come, and that low-cost producers would be able to force higher-cost miners from the market.

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Richest Woman in Asia-Pacific Buys Iron as BHP Calls End to Era – by Jasmine Ng and David Stringer (Bloomberg News – November 21, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Gina Rinehart, the Asia-Pacific’s richest woman, is set to start exports in September from her new A$10 billion ($8.6 billion) iron ore mine undeterred by prices trading near five-year lows and forecast to extend losses.

“We don’t like the ore price going down, but we’re in the lower quartile” of production costs, Rinehart, chairman of Hancock Prospecting Pty, said yesterday in an interview at the Roy Hill mine in Australia’s iron-rich Pilbara region.

She was talking just hours after Andrew Mackenzie, chief executive officer of BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), called an end to the era of “massive expansions of iron ore.” BHP and rivals Rio Tinto Group (RIO) and Vale SA (VALE5) are flooding the global market, spurring a surplus after a $120 billion spending spree to boost the capacity of their mines from Australia to Brazil.

“I don’t think next year would be ideal to be adding new supply,” Daniel Morgan, a Sydney-based analyst at UBS AG, said in a Nov. 17. phone interview. “The market is pretty well supplied for the next few years.”

BHP stock lost 4.7 percent in Sydney this week for the biggest weekly loss since March, while Rio shares fell 6.1 percent. Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) Ltd., the country’s third-biggest shipper, retreated 54 percent this year.

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BHP pulls sale of Nickel West as it finds no buyer – by Barry FitzGerald (The Australian – November 13, 2014)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business

BHP Billiton’s simplification drive under chief executive Andrew Mackenzie has hit a snag as it decided to pull the sale of the loss-making Nickel West after failing to secure an acceptable price.

Nickel West, which BHP most wanted to sell off, is the collection of Western Australian nickel assets picked up by BHP with its 2005 acquisition of WMC Resources.

That BHP has not been able to find a buyer is not a complete surprise as the assets were pointedly not good enough to be included in BHP’s spin-off of NewCo, announced in August.

NewCo is a $20 billion company that would join the stock exchange lists next year holding BHP’s other unwanted assets (South American nickel, aluminium, South African coal and manganese) outside of its “four pillars’’ of iron ore, copper, petroleum and coal.

“We believe that Nickel West is neither a good fit with BHP Billiton nor with NewCo,’’ Mr Macknezie said in August. He cited the maturity and complexity of the business as the reasons for not including it in NewCo, or BHP itself.

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Nickel’s Waning Price Boom Leaves BHP With Unwanted Mines – by David Stringer (November 12, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The failure to find a buyer for its Australian nickel business has left BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) with unwanted smelters and pits after the collapse of a price boom.

The metal reached a two-year high on May 13, a day before the world’s biggest miner outlined a plan to sell all or part of the unit. Since then, the price has declined 27 percent. Nickel West, which includes mines, concentrators, the Kalgoorlie smelter and Kwinana refinery, didn’t attract a suitable bid, the company said today in a statement.

While Glencore Plc (GLEN) Chief Executive Officer Ivan Glasenberg said earlier his company planned to examine Nickel West and would be “kicking its tires,” no acceptable offers were made, BHP said.

The biggest miners have found some units more difficult to divest as they trim portfolios amid lower commodity prices. Rio Tinto Group (RIO), the second-largest, halted work last year to try and sell its diamond unit after failing to find a buyer.

BHP said the nickel unit will remain within the company’s main portfolio, after CEO Andrew Mackenzie signaled it wouldn’t be included in a planned spinoff next year of smaller assets. The division doesn’t fit with either BHP’s core businesses, or operations, which will form the proposed new company, he said in August.

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Nickel West bids fail to find magic number – by Nick Evans (The West Australian – November 12, 2014)

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/

BHP Billiton has shelved the $800 million sale of Nickel West after bids for the struggling unit failed to meet its price expectations.

It remains unclear what the mining giant now plans to do with a business that employs about 1800 people across its mines, concentrators, nickel smelter and refinery.

BHP would not comment yesterday. Chief executive Andrew Mac- kenzie has made clear he does not want to keep the unit, which is part of the proposed NewCo spin-off that will house second-tier assets, including Worsley alumina.

Mr Mackenzie said three months ago that Nickel West was “neither a good fit with BHP Billiton nor with NewCo” and the best outcome was for it to be owned by an operator “much more committed to the nickel business”.

Industry sources said no final bids received over the past fortnight came close to the $500 million to $800 million valuation BHP is said to have initially put on Nickel West.

The failure of suitors to see sufficient value in the business came despite talk that BHP had dramatically revised its price expectations as the sales process dragged on.

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