Cheaper imports to deliver future shocks to merchant miners

Domestic iron ore producers are feeling the pinch of a rising preference for captive mining among steelmakers and competition from cheap imports

India came into the reckoning for steelmaking by some of the world’s major groups more than a decade ago. Nothing came of that, though. As much as the certainty that steel demand in India would grow at a fair clip for years to come, the country’s ownership of 31.32 billion tonnes (bt) of iron ore, much of it of good quality, drew the Korean steelmaking major Posco to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Odisha government in June 2005 for building a 12 million tonne (mt) steel mill in Paradip. The next year ArcelorMittal announced its plan to