Rising International Offers Likely to Lift Petcoke Prices in India

Petcoke offers from key international regions have gone up remarkably of late.

Market players attribute the recent upswing in import offers to unavailability in international markets.

According to a reputed importer, offers of Petcoke (with 9% Sulphur content) have gone up to USD 44-46/MT, CFR India. Offers of the material (with 6.5% Sulphur content) from the US have also moved up to USD 48-50/MT, CFR India.

The inflating offers also subtly indicate that Indian producers are likely to hike their ex-work prices in the upcoming price revisions, although domestic ex-work prices have been maintained at the rates revised on the 1 Apr’16.

Reliance Industries Limited and Essar, the largest and the second largest producers in the country respectively, had raised their respective ex-work prices by INR 150/MT to INR 4,150/MT and INR 4,140/MT, with effect from 1 Apr’16.

In the meantime, demand continues to be strong in the country as active production in the end-user industries are going on.

During Mar’16, 963,100 metric tonne of Petcoke was imported into India, according to SteelMint Research. The prominent regions of import were USA and Saudi Arabia, SteelMint Research shows.

The last fiscal saw a record 9.92 MnT of import into the country as offers were significantly low to attract buyers in the country.

Petcoke import into India in FY16

Source: SteelMint Research