Raspadskaya coking coal sales down 24% in Q4 2013

Sales of concentrate by Russian coking coal producer Raspadskaya fell by 24% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2013, as work at the mining complexes was shifted to new coal-faces.

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The percentage change was calculated by Steel First based on statistics released by Raspadskaya, a unit of steelmaker Evraz, on Thursday January 16.

Total concentrate sales at Raspadskaya were 1.05 million tonnes for the quarter, down from 1.37 million tonnes in the corresponding period in 2012.

Export sales shot up by 65% year-on-year to 482,000 tonnes in October-December, from 292,000 tonnes a year earlier. Export sales included those to parent company Evraz’s steel mill in Ukraine.

But Raspadskaya’s sales in Russia almost halved year-on-year to 567,000 tonnes in the fourth quarter, from 1.08 million tonnes in 2012.

Raspadskaya produced 1.86 million tonnes of raw coal in the quarter, down by 15% year-on-year. Production cuts, which affected sales, were mainly attributed to the “scheduled relocation of the mining complexes at the Raspadskaya mine and at the MUK-96 mine”, the company said.

In the whole year of 2013, Raspadskaya sold 5.14 million tonnes of concentrate, up by 18% year-on-year on higher exports. Sales in 2012 were 4.36 million tonnes.

Exports sales almost tripled to 2.17 million tonnes in the year, from only 769,000 tonnes in 2012. Last year, 73% of Raspadskaya’s export sales were to the Asia-Pacific region, with the rest sold in Ukraine.

In the domestic market, Raspadskaya’s concentrate sales shrank by 17%, reaching 3 million tonnes in 2013 compared with 3.59 million tonnes in 2012.

The producer’s raw coal output last year stood at 7.82 million tonnes, up by 12% year-on-year.

The company’s production plan for 2014 “implies the possibility of increasing total output by about 40% compared with 2013 [on] commission into operation of four [coal-mining] faces during 2014”, ceo Gennady Kozovoy said.