Spot coking coal indices edge lower as bearish sentiment persists

Trade on the seaborne hard coking coal market remained muted on Thursday November 28 on continuing bearish sentiment.

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Two new offers for Australian PCI material into China were heard at $120 per tonne cfr, but no fresh trades were heard for either premium hard coking coal or hard coking coal.

Steel First’s daily index for premium hard coking coal cfr Jingtang was calculated at $149.53 per tonne, down by $1.10 per tonne from levels seen on Wednesday.

Premium hard coking coal fob DBCT Australia was calculated at $139.94 per tonne, down by $1.36 per tonne on the day.

The price for hard coking coal cfr Jingtang stood at $140.97 per tonne on Thursday, down by $0.96 per tonne from Wednesday.

Hard coking coal fob DBCT stood at $128.80 per tonne, down by $1.08 per tonne on the day.

Several buy-side sources told Steel First that they have not paid much attention to the market recently as demand remained weak. They do not expect to book new cargoes for another few weeks.

“I’m not in a rush to sell now because the market is just pretty bad,” a trading source in Beijing said.

While the market still seems to be in a downtrend, the room for prices to fall is also limited, market participants said.

On the pulverised coal injection (PCI) coal front, prices seemed to remain stable. A mill source in Singapore said the recent price rally seen in thermal coal has given it some support as the calorific value of PCI allows the materials to be sold in the thermal coal market as well.

The most-traded May coking coal futures contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange closed at 1,112 yuan ($181) per tonne on Thursday, up from Wednesday’s close of 1,107 yuan ($181) per tonne.

The most-traded May coke contract closed at 1,617 yuan ($264) per tonne, also up from 1,612 yuan ($263) per tonne seen a day earlier.