Proposal to amend Fastmarkets’ coking coal index specifications

The first part of the proposal is to amend the laycan timing of its coking coal indices to 16-60 days, instead of within 60 days, following market feedback that spot cargoes loading within 0-15 days may be deemed too prompt and unrepresentative of spot prices.

The proposed change to the timing will allow the index to exclude cargoes with prompt laycans, because they will affect the robustness and representativeness of the coking coal indices.

Fastmarkets also proposes to amend the unit of its coking coal indices to wet metric tonne from dry metric tonne, to align with market practice. The proposed change of price unit will not affect the calculation and functioning of the coking coal indices.

Fastmarkets further proposes to remove the list of brand names that will be included and normalized in each coking coal index from its methodology, to avoid confusion between the list of brands and index quality specifications.

This part of the proposal does not affect the calculation of the indices, because materials falling within the specification ranges can be included in the calculation and normalized to index base specification. This will also prevent regular amendments of a list of brands if they undergo quality changes in the future.

The proposed changes of timing, unit, and the proposed removal of brands are intended for the following coking coal indices:
MB-COA-0003 Premium hard coking coal, fob DBCT
MB-COA-0005 Premium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang
MB-COA-0004 Hard coking coal, fob DBCT
MB-COA-0002 Hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang
MB-COA-0008 PCI low-vol, fob DBCT
MB-COA-0007 PCI low-vol, cfr Jingtang

All other chemical and physical specifications will be unaffected by these proposals.

The consultation period for these amendments starts from Monday December 5, 2022, and will end on Thursday January 5, 2023. The amendments will then take place, subject to market feedback, on Tuesday January 10, 2023.

To provide feedback on these proposals, or if you would like to provide price information by becoming a data submitter to these prices, please email pricing@fastmarkets.com. Please add the subject heading “FAO: Jane Fan/Paul Lim, re: Coking Coal Index Specification.”

To see all of Fastmarkets’ pricing methodology and specification documents, go to: https://www.fastmarkets.com/about-us/methodology.