Australian Coking Coal Offers May Not Rise

Coking coal offers from Australia have limited scope for improvement in the weeks to come.

Most of the Indian steelmakers are placing orders for Coking coal imports as per their requirement only. No excess quantity to maintain coal stock interests them as of now.

Premium Hard coking coal prices are at USD 84.5-85.5/MT FOB Australia and Semi-hard coking coal at USD 77-78/MT FOB Australia.

Freight charges at USD 14/MT for Supramax, USD 10/MT for Panamax and USD 7/MT for Capesize remain unchanged for the past couple of weeks.

With no big shift in demand from Indian steelmakers, Australian Coking coal prices are expected to go up by may be not more than USD 1.5-2/MT.

In the current month, 3.5 MnT Coking coal has already been imported to India and may go up to around 3.8-3.9 MnT. Thus, a comparison with the previous month imports at 3.3 MnT, shows that they have improved.

The rise in imports has probably taken place so as to stock ahead of monsoon, when coal extraction, transportation and handling, comes up as major constraint.