Australian Waratah Terminals Coal Supply Increases to China by 43% in Apr’16

China’s coal off-take from Waratah Terminals in eastern Australia hit the highest in Apr’16 since Jan’16 and recorded a growth of 43% to 1.32 MnT. While, the climb is majorly contributed by Hong Kong shipments, which rose from 70,000 MT to 0.92 MnT in a month, reported by Port Waratah Coal Services.

Chinese coal shipments fell by 32% to 3.6 MnT in last 4 months from PWCS terminal, which was 5.3 MnT (Jan’15-Apr’15) at the same period last year.

It is to be noted that owing to slowing Chinese coal demand, Australian miners seem to be more focused to diversify their coal supply destinations shortly. However, the country shipped about 0.98 MnT coal from PWCS terminal to Mexico, Malaysia and Thailand in Apr’16.

Total coal exports from PWCS terminal
Out of the total export, about 86% (7.93 MnT) thermal coal was shipped from the terminal in Apr’16 and the rest about 1.3 MnT exported quantity was semi-soft coking coal. Only 10% semi-soft coal was exported from the origin in 2015, which increased to 13% in 2016, shows that semi-soft coal output increased in Australia this year.

Quantity in MnT

Japan
On the other side, Japan, one of the largest destinations for Australian coal, has been maintaining its coal off-take from PWCS terminal and lifted 4.14 MnT and 4.44 MnT coal in Mar’16 and Apr’16 respectively. The country imported about 17.1 MnT coal during Jan-Apr’16, which was 16.57 MnT last year.

South Korea
The PWCS terminal delivered about 0.84 MnT coal to South Korea in Apr’16, also total shipments fell by about 16.5% to 4.98 MnT since Jan-Apr’16 compared with last year. Taiwan booked 1.1 MnT of coal shipped from the same terminal in Apr’16, down slightly to 1.24 MnT in March.

India
India, one of the biggest buyers of coking coal from Australia, had took about 0.13 MnT coal from the PWCS terminal last month; up from only 35,000 MT in Mar’16. However, India’s total coal shipments from PWCS fell by 21% to 0.55 MnT since the begging of 2016.