COKING COAL DAILY: Filled import quotas keep seaborne prices unchanged

There was little to no movement in seaborne coking coal prices on Friday August 28 and sources from China said they expect the cfr market to be soft for another month.

Fastmarkets indices
Premium hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $105.90 per tonne, down $0.02 per tonne
Premium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $114.71 per tonne, up $0.01 per tonne
Hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $85.27 per tonne, down $0.25 per tonne
Hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $98.29 per tonne, unchanged

There were no transactions heard on Friday.

“We traded Australian coking coal mainly in the first half of 2020. As time goes by, there are few coking coal import quotas for 2020 so there has been little movement in seaborne coking coal prices in the cfr China market since August,” a trader source in eastern China said.

But he noted trading of premium hard coking coal in the fob Australia market was active and its price went up by $1-2 per tonne fob Australia. “It indicates there is some demand for seaborne material from ex-China markets. For instance, India bought several cargoes of premium hard coking coal this week,” he explained.

A buyer source from China said Chinese market participants need to wait for another month before they can procure cargoes of seaborne coking coal with a November-laycan. Therefore, the cfr China market will be quiet until then, in his opinion.

Dalian Commodity Exchange
The most-traded January 2021 coking coal contract closed at 1,231 yuan ($178.70) per tonne on Friday, up by 7.50 yuan per tonne.

The most-traded January 2021 coke futures contract closed at 1,940 yuan per tonne, up by 27 yuan per tonne.