The report, Iron Ore: the bigger picture, by Port Jackson Partners said Australia’s iron ore industry had capitalised on the boom years to create a market position that is stronger than before the boom.
“As a result, the industry is likely to contribute in excess of $A600 billion to the economy over the next decade, more than over the decade from 2005 to 2014,” MCA said.
The contribution over the past decade reached around $450 billion.
Australia’s average annual iron ore production rose from 170 million tonnes to around 660Mtpa between 2000 and 2014, with the price hitting an all-time high of $US190 per tonne in 2011.
The iron ore price fell as low as $47.08/t in early April and is currently around $52/t and is widely tipped to fall further.
The report estimates that Pilbara revenue since 2005 grew fivefold to $A71 billion in 2014, while expansion capital was more than $100 billion between 2005 and 2015, nine times the total spend in between 1995 and 2004.
Since 2000, Australia’s global iron ore market share has increased from 34% to 50%, while it also lowered its position on the cost curve.
In 2000, half of Australia’s iron ore production came from operations in the lowest 25%, while PJP found that more than 80% of Australia’s iron ore capacity was currently in the bottom half of the global cost curve.
The report set out to find out whether the government could have acted differently to ensure Australia would now be in a higher priced world.
But PJP said the global iron ore market was influenced by global trends and not Australian producers.
“Iron ore trades in a global commodity market and recent prices falls have not been out of line with trends in other commodity markets,” the report said.
The report found that the actions of the Australian iron ore industry over the past decade were “exactly right” from a national interest perspective, ensuring the sector would continue to generate wealth even in a prolonged price downturn.
The report supports MCA’s long-held view that government intervention in the iron ore sector is unwarranted.
PJP said any intervention was likely to be “ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst”.
“Across commodity markets, past attempts at controlling price through centralised marketing have failed,” the report said.
“And Australia’s experimentation with export controls in the 1970s and 1980s saw Japanese investment support Brazilian iron ore capacity instead of Australian.”
It comes after Andrew Forrest’s attempts to prompt a government inquiry into the iron ore market failed.
MCA was one of Forrest’s biggest critics, though its major backers are BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.
The report recommended that policies remain focussed on productivity growth and cost competitiveness through free markets.
