And the inevitable has happened. Global mining giant BHP Billiton Ltd. will leave no stone unturned to maintain business stability and viability, as it announced job cuts will be made even at the expense of its top revenue business driver, the iron ore division.

On Tuesday, the world's third-biggest ore producer declared it has started discussing redeployment and job losses with workers assigned at its iron-ore operations in the remote western Pilbara region.

No exact numbers were given, but varied reports claim BHP will slash some 200 jobs from its iron ore unit.

The company said there are currently approximately 900 open roles available across the iron ore business. But it refrained to provide how many people will be made redundant until the redeployment process has been completed.

"For most people there will be little change other than position title and reporting-line changes," Antonios Papaspiropoulos, a spokesman at BHP's headquarters in Melbourne, told The Wall Street Journal. "For some people there will be greater impact."

"What you've got to expect across the broader mining sector at the moment is that they're all going to be cutting jobs," analyst Glyn Lawcock said in Reuters News. "Clearly in the last few years what you've seen in the mining industry is excess."

The redundancies, BHP maintained, form part of a wider company effort to rein in costs amid sliding commodity prices.

"Against a backdrop of increasing costs and falling commodity prices, we continue to focus on reducing our overheads and operating costs," the company said in a statement.

''Every effort will be made to redeploy impacted people across the business and, if necessary, the broader BHP Billiton Group. A person will only be made redundant where a suitable role cannot be found or they choose to take a redundancy package," an unidentified source told the Business Spectator.