Seaborne coking coal prices remain rangebound

The seaborne coking coal market was stable on Monday November 25, with few buyers looking at the hard coking coal segment.

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Steel First’s daily index for premium hard coking coal cfr Jingtang was calculated at $151.29 per tonne, down from $152.44 per tonne on Friday.

Premium hard coking coal prices fob DBCT (Australia) were calculated at $143.95 per tonne, up from $141.99 per tonne on Friday.

Hard coking coal prices cfr Jingtang dropped by $0.84 to $141.09 per tonne.

Hard coking coal fob DBCT was calculated at $129.04 per tonne, up by $1.79 per tonne on the day.

“Buyers don’t want to buy premium hard coking coal at the moment because they have a lot of stock. Some of them are looking at buying low-volatility pulverised coal injection (PCI) coal,” a trading source in Singapore told Steel First.

Offers of a premium Australian brand were heard to have come down by $3 per tonne from last week, but buying interest remained low.

“If a seller really wants to sell right now, the prices have to be low enough to attract any buyer,” a Singapore-based mill source said.

He added, however, that the market seems to be close to the bottom and that some buyers may emerge over the next four weeks or so to stock up for the Chinese New Year.

A total of 5.22 million tonnes of coking coal were reportedly sitting at the Jingtang port on Monday, up from 5.09 million tonnes a week ago. Rizhao port saw 2.12 million tonnes of inventory on Monday, also up from 2.08 million tonnes reported last week.

The most-traded May coking coal contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange closed at 1,119 yuan ($182) per tonne on Monday, down from Friday’s close of 1,123 yuan ($183) per tonne. The most-traded coke contract closed at 1,609 yuan ($262) per tonne on Monday, also down from the close of 1,612 yuan ($263) per tonne seen on Friday.

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