FOCUS: China's coking coal quotas altering market dynamics

China's coking coal import quotas have changed the dynamics of the seaborne market, making the trading of the steelmaking raw material more risky, time-consuming and expensive for traders.

What was typically a month-long process for a vessel carrying Australian coking coal to deliver to China has stretched to at least four months after import quotas became scarcer and port restrictions became tighter.
"Under ideal circumstances, it takes about 15 days for a vessel of Australian coking coal to arrive at a Chinese port and three days to unload. Then it takes 14 days to pass through customs [though this varies across different ports]. That's 32 days in total," a trader in China said.
But such vessels are now sitting at anchorages for longer periods in their wait to be unloaded.

At the time of writing, vessels of Australian coking coal that had arrived in early June are still waiting at the anchorages of the ports of Jingtang and Caofeidian - a wait for three months so far -...

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