BlueScope Steel is an Australian steel producer headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria. It was created when BHP Billiton spun off its steel business as BHP Steel on 15 July 2002, and it took the name BlueScope on 17 November 2003. It makes metallic-coated and pre-painted steel widely used for roofing in Australia and New Zealand, and operates in 14 countries with more than 15,800 employees across over 160 locations.
Roofing brands
- COLORBOND steel: pre-painted steel for roofing, walling and rainwater goods.
- ZINCALUME steel: steel with an aluminium-zinc alloy coating, used unpainted for roofing and as the substrate for painted products.
- TRUECORE steel.
- LYSAGHT: roll-formed roofing, walling, rainwater and structural products.
- BUTLER, from the US company Butler Manufacturing.
Operations
BlueScope's Australian steelmaking is centred on the Port Kembla steelworks in New South Wales, the country's largest integrated steel plant, with coating and painting at Western Port in Hastings, Victoria. It owns New Zealand Steel at Glenbrook. In the United States it merged with Butler Manufacturing in 2004 and acquired four US businesses in 2007; in 2019 it announced a USD 1 billion expansion of its US investment. In India it built a coated steel plant at Jamshedpur, opened in March 2012 through its joint venture with Tata Steel, Tata BlueScope Steel, which it sold to Tata Steel in 2025.
Regulatory history
In 2022 the Federal Court of Australia ordered BlueScope to pay a record AUD 57.5 million penalty in a cartel case brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in 2019.
Context
In Australia, steel producers such as BlueScope supply coated coil to roll-formers, who shape it into corrugated and other profiles; roofing sheet is therefore often described by both the coating brand and the profile name.