BHP Group Limited, founded as the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, is an Australian multinational mining and metals corporation. BHP was established in August 1885 in Broken Hill and is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria. The company specialises in mining and selling iron ore, copper and coal.
BHP Billiton was formed in June 2001 through the merger of the Australian Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP) and the Anglo–Dutch Billiton plc, trading on both the Australian Securities Exchange and London Stock Exchange as a dual-listed company.
In 2015, some BHP Billiton assets were demerged and rebranded as South32, while a scaled-down BHP Billiton became BHP. In 2018, BHP Billiton Limited and BHP Billiton plc became BHP Group Limited and BHP Group plc, respectively. In January 2022, BHP relinquished its London Stock Exchange listing, becoming a solely Australian Securities Exchange-listed company.
As of 2026, BHP is the largest public company in Australia, and the largest mining company in the world, both as measured by market capitalisation. In 2025, the company's position in the Forbes Global 2000 was 125th.
History Billiton
was founded 29 September 1860, when its articles of association were approved by a meeting of shareholders in the hotel in The Hague, Netherlands. Two months later, the company acquired mineral rights to the Belitung (formerly Billiton) and Bangka Islands in the Netherlands Indies archipelago off the eastern coast of Sumatra.
Billiton's initial ventures included tin and lead smelting in the Netherlands, followed in the 1940s by bauxite mining in Indonesia and Suriname. In 1970, Shell acquired Billiton. Billiton opened a tin smelting and refining plant in Phuket, Thailand, named Thaisarco (for Thailand Smelting And Refining Company, Limited).
In 1994, South Africa's Gencor acquired the mining division of Billiton excluding the downstream metal division. Billiton was divested from Gencor in 1997, and was amalgamated with Gold Fields in 1998. In 1997, Billiton plc became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and in 2001 Billiton plc merged with the Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP) to form BHP Billiton.
Broken Hill Proprietary Company
The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP), also known by the nickname , was incorporated on 13 August 1885, operating the silver and lead mine at Broken Hill, in western New South Wales, Australia. The Broken Hill group floated on 10 August 1885.Jay, Christopher. (1999) A Future More Prosperous: The History of Newcastle Steelworks 1912–1999, The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited, Newcastle. p. 30. The first consignment of Broken Hill ore (48 tons, 5 cwt, 3 gr) was smelted at the Intercolonial Smelting and Refining Company's works at Spotswood, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne. Historian Christopher Jay notes:
The geographic Broken Hill, for which the town was named, was discovered and named by Captain Charles Sturt, stirring great interest among prospectors. Nothing of note was discovered until 5 November 1883, when Charles Rasp, boundary rider for the surrounding Mount Gipps Station, pegged out a claim with contractors David James and James Poole.Coulls, A. "Rasp, Charles (1846 - 1907)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6. Melbourne University Press, 1976. p. 9.
Together with a half-dozen backers, including station manager George McCulloch (a young cousin of Victorian Premier Sir James McCulloch),Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Rasp formed the Broken Hill Company staking out the entire Hill. As costs mounted during the ensuing months of fruitless search, three of the original seven (now remembered as the Syndicate of Seven) sold their shares, so that, on the eve of the company's great success, there were nine shareholders, including Rasp, McCulloch, Philip Charly (aka Charley), David James, James Poole (five of the original syndicate of seven, which had previously included George Urquhart and G.A.M. Lind), Bowes Kelly, W. R. Wilson, and William Jamieson (who had bought shares from several of the founders).
John Darling, Jr. became a director of the company in 1892 and was chairman of directors from 1907 to 1914; he was succeeded by his son Harold Gordon Darling, initially as a director on his father's death, in 1914, and then as chairman from 1923 to 1950.
Strongly encouraged by the New South Wales Minister for Public Works, Arthur Hill Griffith, in 1915, the company ventured into steel manufacturing, with its operations based primarily at the Newcastle Steelworks. The decision to move from mining ore at Broken Hill to opening a steelworks at Newcastle was due to the technical limitations in recovering value from mining the lower-lying sulphide ores.Jay, Christopher. (1999) A Future More Prosperous: The History of Newcastle Steelworks 1912–1999, The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited, Newcastle. p. 34. The discovery of Iron Knob and Iron Monarch near the western shore of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia, combined with the refinement, by BHP metallurgists A. D. Carmichael and Leslie Bradford, of the froth flotation technique for separating zinc sulphides from the accompanying gangue and subsequent conversion (Carmichael–Bradford process) to oxides of the metal, allowed BHP to economically extract valuable metals from the heaps of tailings up to high at the mine site.Jay, Christopher. (1999) A Future More Prosperous: The History of Newcastle Steelworks 1912–1999, The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited, Newcastle. pp. 42–43. In 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy targeted the BHP steelworks during the largely unsuccessful shelling of Newcastle.
Newcastle operations were closed in 1999, and a commemorative sculpture, The Muster Point, was installed on Industrial Drive, in the suburb of Mayfield, New South Wales. The long products side of the steel business was spun off to form OneSteel in 2000.
In the 1950s, BHP began petroleum exploration, which became an increasing focus following oil and natural gas discoveries in Bass Strait in the 1960s.
BHP began to diversify into a variety of mining projects overseas. Those included the Ok Tedi copper mine in Papua New Guinea, where the company was successfully sued by the indigenous inhabitants because of the environmental degradation caused by mining operations. BHP had better success with the giant Escondida copper mine in Chile, of which it owns 57.5%, and at the Ekati Diamond Mine in northern Canada, which BHP contracted for in 1996, began mining in 1998, and sold its 80% stake in to Dominion Diamond Corporation in 2013 as production declined.
BHP Billiton
In June 2001, BHP merged with Billiton to form BHP Billiton.BHP Billiton Merger Complete BHP Billiton 29 June 2001
BHP Billiton announced its intention to dispose of its transport assets that included 11 ships.BHP Billiton to exit transport / logistics Australasian Transport News 4 July 2001Decision on BHP Transport + Logistics Australasian Transport News 10 October 2001 In 2002, BHP Billiton's stevedoring operations in Australia and New Zealand were sold to Toll.Toll buys BHP's stevedoring ops Australasian Transport News 12 April 2002
In July 2002, the flat steel products business was spun off as BHP Steel, which in 2003 became BlueScope.BHP Steel Demerger Effective Following Court Approval BHP Billiton 1 July 2002
In March 2005, BHP Billiton announced a US$7.3 billion agreed bid for WMC Resources, owners of the Olympic Dam copper, gold and uranium mine in South Australia, nickel operations in Western Australia and Queensland, and a Queensland fertiliser plant. The takeover achieved 90 per cent acceptance on 17 June 2005, and 100 per cent ownership was announced on 2 August 2005, achieved through compulsory acquisition of the remaining 10 per cent of the shares.
On 8 November 2007, BHP Billiton announced it was seeking to purchase rival mining group Rio Tinto in an all-share deal. The initial offer of 3.4 shares of BHP Billiton stock for each share of Rio Tinto was rejected by the board of Rio Tinto for "significantly undervaluing" the company. It was unknown at the time whether BHP Billiton would attempt to purchase Rio Tinto through some form of hostile takeover. A formal hostile bid of 3.4 BHP Billiton shares for each Rio Tinto share was announced on 6 February 2008; The bid was withdrawn 25 November 2008 due to the 2008 financial crisis.
As global nickel prices fell, on 25 November 2008, Billiton announced it would drop its A$66 billion takeover of rival Rio Tinto Group, stating that the "risks to shareholder value" would "increase" to "an unacceptable level" due to the 2008 financial crisis.
On 21 January 2009, BHP Billiton announced the Ravensthorpe Nickel Mine in Western Australia would cease operations, ending shipments of ore from Ravensthorpe to the Yabulu nickel plant in Queensland Australia. Yabulu refinery was subsequently sold to Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer, becoming the Palmer Nickel and Cobalt Refinery. The Pinto Valley mine in the United States was also closed. Mine closures and general scaling back during the 2008 financial crisis accounted for 6,000 employee lay offs.
On 9 December 2009, as the nickel market became saturated by both spiraling economics and cheaper extraction methods, BHP Billiton sold its Ravensthorpe Nickel Minewhich had cost A$2.4 billion to buildFirst Quantum Minerals for US$340 million.. Ravensthorpe cost BHP US$3.6 billion in write-downs when it was shut in January 2009 after less than a year of production.
In January 2010, following the BHP Billiton purchase of Athabasca Potash for , The Economist reported that, by 2020, BHP Billiton could produce approximately 15 per cent of the world demand for potash.
In August 2010, BHP Billiton made a hostile takeover bid worth for PotashCorp. The bid came after BHP's first bid, made on 17 August, was rejected as being undervalued. This acquisition marked a major strategic move by BHP outside hard commodities and commenced the diversification of its business away from resources with high exposure to carbon price risk, like coal, petroleum and iron ore. The takeover bid was opposed by the Government of Saskatchewan under Premier Brad Wall. On 3 November, Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement announced the preliminary rejection of the deal under the Investment Canada Act, giving BHP Billiton 30 days to refine their deal before a final decision was made;BHP's PotashCorp bid rejected for now CBC News 3 November 2010 BHP withdrew its offer on 14 November 2010. Canada's decision to block the deal was generally viewed as surprising by the global investment community.
On 22 February 2011, BHP Billiton announced that it had paid $4.75 billion in cash to Chesapeake Energy for its Fayetteville shale assets, which include of mineral rights leases and of pipeline located in north central Arkansas. The wells on the mineral leases are currently producing about of natural gas per day. BHP Billiton planned to spend $800 million to $1 billion a year over 10 years to develop the field and triple production.
On 14 July 2011, BHP Billiton announced it would acquire Petrohawk Energy of the United States for approximately $12.1 billion in cash, considerably expanding its shale natural gas resources in an offer of $US38.75 per share.
On 22 August 2012, BHP Billiton announced it was delaying its Olympic Dam copper mine expansion project in South Australia to study less capital intensive options, deferring its dual harbour strategy at West Australian Iron Ore and slowing down its Potash growth option in Canada. The company simultaneously announced a freeze on approving any major new expansion projects.
Days after announcing the Olympic Dam pull-out, BHP Billiton announced that it was selling its Yeelirrie Uranium Project to Canadian Cameco for a fee of around $430 million. The sale was part of a broader move to step away from resource expansion in Australia.