New realities
Australia’s mining industry in the doldrumsSummary: Compared with other raw-material-producing nations, Australia’s mining industry is more strongly aligned with the sustainable demand for raw materials in China. Due to the high demand in recent years, capacity has been massively expanded. However, China’s appetite for raw materials has recently slowed markedly and the prices for many raw materials have fallen since 2012, due to the imbalance of global production rates and demand. What this means for Australia’s mining industry and for the extraction of coal, iron ore, copper, gold and diamonds, is shown in the following article.
1 Raw materials forecasts and price decline
An explanation of the global demand for raw materials is usually based on a growing world population, global urbanization and rising per capita incomes. In the case of so-called “emerging countries”, forecasts of their future needs for certain raw materials are derived from the per capita consumption of these raw materials in the so-called “Mature Countries”. Each forecast is predicated on the assumption that as the country’s per capita economic performance increases, the demand for raw materials rises steeply, then goes through a peak and...