Seaborne metallurgical coke prices have been on the rise over the past five weeks, spurred by resurging blast furnace utilization rates in China since the end of the winter caps in mid-March.
Notably, the global metallurgical coke industry is largely dominated by Chinese, Indian and Japanese companies. China, in particular, has become the world’s largest consumer of metallurgical coke because of having the world’s highest steel output — it accounted for a whopping 49% of the 1.7 billion metric tons of steel produced globally last year, according to the World Steel Association (worldsteel).
The seaborne prices for met coke rebounded in the end of April, with steel mills in China resuming normal production rates post winter curtailments.
Nevertheless, in India indigenously produced met coke prices have continued to remain unchanged from the rates that prevailed in the previous week, though market analysts are projecting the prices to rise in accordance with the increasing import offers in the near term.
The current ex-works prices of the Blast Furnace grade are at around INR 26,000/MT (east coast) and in the range of INR 27,000 to 28,000/MT (west coast).
Latest offers for the 64% CSR met coke have gone up to around USD 353/MT FOB China, while, offers for the 62% CSR met coke are assessed to be at about USD 343/MT FOB China; both these offers are higher by USD 6/MT over the week-ago rates.
For Indian buyers, these offers amount to USD 369/MT and USD 359/MT respectively on CNF basis.
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