Noble loses met coal sales team in Beijing

Trading house Noble has lost its metallurgical coal sales team at its Beijing office, multiple sources told Steel First.

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Tao Huang, gm for met coal China, and Vincent Liu, coking coal marketing manager, left the company earlier this month, according to the sources.

It is unclear what the duo’s next steps are and who their replacements would be. Neither Huang nor Liu could be reached at the time of writing.

Noble declined to comment on the departures.

The company is one of the largest international traders in the met coal market. Its met coal division, led by Tim Gazzard, is headquartered in Singapore.

This is the latest in a series of personnel changes at the Singapore-listed trading house.

Late last year, its former vice-chairman Harindarpal “Harry” Banga launched his own trading firm, Caravel. At least nine people from Noble’s iron ore business in Beijing and Hong Kong are understood to have joined the new venture, including Henrietta Lee, Jim Wong, Nishant Gulati and Isaac Fu.

Rene van der Kam, formerly Noble’s Singapore-based director of base metals, and Julie Zhu, a metal trader at the same office, left the company at the end of last year. They both subsequently joined trading firm Gunvor, with van der Kam now leading its physical base metals business.

Two copper traders in Shanghai left Noble earlier this year.

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