BHP Group, the world’s biggest miner, doesn’t have capacity to raise shipments into the iron ore market as competitor Vale faces outages following the fatal mining disaster in Brazil last month.
The global iron ore market has been thrown upside down by the tragedy, after Vale was forced to shutter operations and the Brazilian government said it’s banning certain types of dams used to hold mining waste. While rival producers such as BHP and Rio Tinto Group might be expected to fill the gap, they’ve got little room to respond after focusing in recent years on maximizing profits rather than increasing volumes.