Inside one billionaire's fight against global iron-ore glut

The global iron-ore market may be oversupplied for as long as half a decade, keeping prices under pressure, according to billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta, which plans to fight back by raising the quality of its output amid a global shift toward higher-grade material being driven by China’s green push. Supply will exceed demand for the next three-to-five years, keeping prices between $50 and $60 a metric ton for ore with 62% iron content, according to R. Kishore Kumar, chief executive officer of the company’s iron-ore division. Weak prices and the rising preference for higher-grade supplies by China is hurting miners on India’s western coast, which ships out most of the nation’s lower content ores, he said in a phone interview from Goa.