Sxcoal Issue #2 | Latest weekly survey on China's thermal and coking coal
This is a special issue primarily focusing on our latest weekly survey on China's thermal and coking coal producers. We hope it provide useful insights into the status quo of the Chinese coal sector.
Thermal coal
Some thermal coal mines, close to complete annual production targets, started cutting output and conducting maintenance for safety concerns. This led to a marked drop in capacity utilization in major production areas.
Over the week ending Dec 14, capacity utilization of the 100 thermal coal mines surveyed by Sxcoal in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia dropped by 1.2 pp WoW to 92.6%.
Weak utility demand and sidelined portside sentiment prompted more mines to maintin prices steady during the week, with the share at 80%, according to our survey. Nine of the surveyed miners raised prices by 51.6 yuan/t averagely, partly following the hike of buying prices for outsourced coal by the nation’s top miner.
Coking coal
Coking coal prices continued to gain support from recent supply tightness. Of the surveyed mines during the week ending Dec 15, 38 mines raised prices by 96 yuan/t, while no mines cut prices.
Most mines reported smooth sales amid improved logistics and restocking demand for winter use, helping drawing down inventories at mines. Both raw and washed coking coal stocks decreased notably, along with the drop in outputs.
Met coke
Coke producers steadily increased production as their profitability slightly recovered after three rounds of price hikes. Capacity utilization at coking plants surveyed by Sxcoal was up by 1.8 pps WoW to 77.0% over Dec 9-15.
However, coke-making profits remained low and some plants were still losses. Only 26 of the 100 surveyed coking plants reported profits during the week.
Kindly remind
The above are just a brief summary of our weekly survey for China's coal sector. More granularized datasets down to each of the mines surveyed are available in EXCEL spreadsheets sent to subscribers via email each Thursday.
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