The battle to claim every acre of Australia's Pilbara iron ore belt is heating up, with the sectors' dominant miners, including BHP Billiton Ltd, turning their gaze on explorer United Minerals Corp. ............................. World's biggest iron ore deposit
The Pilbara is the world's single biggest deposit of iron ore, sprawling over a half-million square kilometres, supplying more than 300 million tonnes of ore to steel mills worldwide this year.
Iron ore prices are expected to soar up to 15 per cent this year as China's steel mills boost production, stoking a hunger for iron ore that drove up the country's imports of the resource by 30 per cent last month.
But over the past five years, much of the Pilbara has been pegged, restricting the acreage of available new ground and making what can be acquired more precious......
BHP is believed to have made $1.40 a share offer for United Minerals, a 50 per cent premium to the last price, The Australian newspaper said in an unsourced report.....
Still, BHP may simply be looking to tie up as much of the Pilbara as it can, particularly given the legion of recent arrivals mining the region, led by Fortescue and Atlas.
"They were caught napping a little bit, it's fair to say," said Ken West, a partner at Perennial Growth.
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