COKING COAL DAILY: Premium hard coking coal fob index up on rising demand

The seaborne premium hard coking coal fob index jumped on Friday September 4 following a new much-higher transaction, which sources say reflects rising demand, Fastmarkets heard.

Fastmarkets indices
Premium hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $110 per tonne, up $3.78 per tonne
Premium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $114.66 per tonne, up $0.23 per tonne
Hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $86.26 pe tonne, up $0.50 per tonne
Hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $98.21 per tonne, unchanged
A 75,000-tonne cargo of premium mid-vol hard coking coal, with October 6-15 laycan, was traded at $108 per tonne fob Australia today, with an option to replace it with another brand of premium mid-vol hard coking coal at $107 per tonne fob Australia, sources told Fastmarkets.
"Premium hard coking coal prices, especially the premium mid-vol [hard coking coal price], are fairly supported by demand. This was reflected in the bids on the GlobalCoal platform. Besides,the weather forecast indicates that there's a high chance of La Nina developing in Australia in the fourth quarter, bringing increased rainfall and an early start to the tropical cyclone season," a trader in Singapore said.
The increased rainfall associated with La Nina usually means above-average winter and spring rainfall for Australia, particularly across the east and north, where Queensland, the main coal-producing area in the country, is located.
Although the fob market was appearing to look better, Chinese end users said they had few coking coal import quotas left for spot cargoes.
"The cfr market has been silent this week. We're now focusing on making transactions in the fob market," a second Singapore-based trader said.
One trader source from China said the price increase in the premium mid-vol hard coking-coal fob market would not push prices in the cfr market up, because it is not about price changes but about a lack of import quotas.
Dalian Commodity Exchange
The most-traded January coking coal futures contract closed at 1,281.50 yuan ($187.32) per tonne on Friday, down by 2 yuan per tonne.
The most-traded January coke contract closed at 2,030.50 yuan per tonne, down by 9.50 yuan per tonne.

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