BHP Billiton Ltd

(NYSE: BHP)

Industry: n/a
On the web: http://www.bhpbilliton.com
Employees: 40,990

BHP Billiton Limited was incorporated in 1885. It is a diversified natural resources company. The Company’s corporate objective is to create long-term value for shareholders through the discovery, development and conversion of natural resources, and the provision of innovative customer and market-focused solutions. It pursues this objective through its unchanged strategy of investing in ‘tier one’ assets that are large, low-cost and long-life to provide a balanced portfolio of export-oriented commodities: steelmaking products- iron ore, metallurgical coal, manganese; ferrous products- copper, aluminium, nickel, diamonds; energy products- petroleum, liquefied natural gas (LNG), energy coal, uranium. It continues to invest in the future and have a deep inventory of growth assets. The Company’s operations and investments are designed to ensure the Group remains stable in the long term and responsive to market volatility in the short term. It operates nine businesses, called Customer Sector Groups (CSGs), which are aligned with the commodities it extracts and markets: Petroleum, Aluminium, Base Metals, Diamonds and Specialty Products, Stainless Steel Materials, Iron Ore, Manganese, Metallurgical Coal, and Energy Coal. The Company’s exploration program is integral to its growth strategy and is focused on identifying and capturing new world-class projects for future development or projects that add significant value to existing operations. Targets for exploration are generally large low-cost mining projects in a range of minerals, including diamonds, copper, nickel, bauxite, iron ore, manganese, coal and potash. The process of discovery runs from early-stage mapping through to drilling and evaluation. The program is global and prioritises targets based on its assessment of the relative attractiveness of each mineral. It continues to pursue opportunities and build its position in prospective countries, including exploring for diamonds in Canada and copper in Zambia, Kazakhstan and Chile. In nickel, it has an exploration program focused on finding new nickel sulphide deposits to sustain and grow its existing operations in Western Australia. In the bulk commodities, activities are focused on a smaller number of highly prospective terrains in Australia and Africa. In addition to its activities focused on finding new world-class deposits, several of its CSGs undertake exploration, mainly aimed at delineating and categorising mineral deposits near existing operations, and advancing projects through the development pipeline. Government regulations touch all aspects of its operations. However, because of the geographical diversity of its operations, no one set of government regulations is likely to have a material effect on its business, taken as a whole.

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