Mining giants BHP Group and Rio Tinto Plc are looking increasingly to India as the next big growth engine for global steelmaking, underscoring how the world’s biggest iron ore suppliers are preparing for a future beyond China.

Senior commercial executives from both mining companies said rising demand and the addition of new capacity in India could help offset slowing growth in China, which has dominated global steel markets for more than two decades.

“I was recently in India. All our customers are doubling capacity,” Michiel Hovers, BHP’s group sales and marketing officer, said during a presentation at Singapore International Ferrous Week on Tuesday. “It’s happening. It’s real,” Bloomberg reported.

India is emerging as the steel industry’s most important growth market as China’s property-led expansion fades. New Delhi has set an ambitious production target of 300 million tonnes by 2031, nearly doubling the 165 million tonnes of steel produced last year, though still far below the 961 million tonnes that China produced.

While per capita steel consumption in the world’s most populous nation remains far below that of China, rapid urbanisation and government-backed infrastructure spending are expected to drive years of demand growth, creating an opportunity for global miners that supply iron ore and metallurgical coal. (See chart)

“We’re just in the early, early days of India’s growth,” Hovers said, adding that BHP was “well-positioned to support” this expansion.

In the coming decade, the iron ore market can expect “substantial demand growth from the Global South, especially from India and Asean” countries, Rio Tinto chief commercial officer Bold Baatar said earlier at the same event. This would help to offset the stagnation in Chinese demand, he said.

The global market would require about 950 million tonnes of new iron ore capacity, he added, not only to meet this new demand but also to counter the depletion of existing mines.