MethodologyContact usLogin
Fastmarkets indices Premium hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $103.04 per tonne, up $0.15 per tonne Premium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $179.63 per tonne, up $1.03 per tonne Hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $92.97 per tonne, up $0.41 per tonne Hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $160.26 per tonne, unchanged
A 45,000-tonne cargo of premium mid-volatility hard coking coal, with January 16-25 laycan, was traded at $102 per tonne fob Australia late on Thursday December 10, Fastmarkets learned.
“Without Chinese end users’ purchasing Australian coal, the premium hard coking coal price in the fob market kept low, struggling at around $102 per tonne fob Australia, however, semi-soft coking coal and PCI prices in the fob market moved up after thermal coal prices surged recently,” a trader source based in Singapore said.
He added that the supply of PCI material “is extremely tight now” while demand is good.
One coke producer source from India said that in November, the country’s imports of PCI increased by almost 40% month on month to 1.2 million tonnes.
Meanwhile in the cfr market, the supply of Russia-origin low-vol PCI was tight due to rail-freight capacity issues in the Russian Far East. As a result, cargoes of Russian coal cannot be transported portside, a trader source said.
“Russian low-vol PCI is traded at $105 per tonne cfr China now,” the trader source said.
Though some end users in China started to resell their cargoes of Australian coking coal – which had been waiting in anchorage – to other countries, most end users were still in ‘wait-and-see’ mode on the expectation that those cargoes will be allowed to unload and pass customs clearance, a buyer source from northern China said.
Dalian Commodity Exchange The most-traded January coking coal futures contract closed at 1,521.50 yuan ($232.43) per tonne on Friday, down by 80.50 yuan per tonne.
The most-traded May coke contract closed at 2,512 yuan per tonne, down by 6 yuan per tonne.