Seaborne Canadian coking coal exports fell slightly in August to stamd at 2.0mt, down by 11.7% m-o-m and 15.9% y-o-y. This brought exports in the year-to-date to 12.6mt, a decline of 30.4% in comparison to the same period in 2008.
The situation for Canadian metallurgical coal exports to virtually all destinations has been pretty bleak so far in 2009. Exports to Europe have declined by 34.4% y-o-y and exports to Asia by 6.7% y-o-y, where the large increase in exports to China has not fully compensated for the contraction in exports to Japan and South Korea.
Seaborne US metallurgical coal exports in August
exhibited m-o-m and y-o-y on year growth, before falling slightly in September. Exports in August were up 29.6% y-o-y to stand at 3.1mt, before falling to 3.0mt in September. However, total exports in the first nine months are still significantly below 2008 levels, by 20.6% (5.6m t), and full year exports are projected to reach just 30.1mt.
Coaking Coal News
Australian metallurgical coal exports in September reached 13.9mt, up 1.9% y-o-y and 10.1% m-o-m. This brought exports in the first nine months of 2009 to just over 100mt, representing a decline of just 3.6% y-o-y, which, when considering how low exports were at the start of the year, is a somewhat impressive revival. Coking coal exports to Asia in the year-to-date totalled 87.5mt, accounting for 87.4% of Australia’s export total, a significant increase on the 71.8% (74.6mt) share it accounted for in the same period of 2008. The majority of this percentage share increase has been due to the surge in Chinese metallurgical coal imports in 2009. Back in the first nine months of 2008, China was the destination for just 0.8% of Australia’s coking coal, compared to 23.6% in the same period this year.
The latest release by the World Steel Association shows that crude steel production in Taiwan during the first ten months of 2009 was down by 29.9% y-o-y, although production figures are slowly beginning to increase m-o-m. .Pre|iminay statistics suggest that coking coal imports to Taiwan were
down by around 17% for the first nine months of the year, and full year imports are currently projected to decline by around the same percentage.
Even though Indian steel production during the first ten months of 2009 was up by 1.0% y-o-y, coking coal imports to the country are projected to fall by 0.9mt y-o-y. BFI production within the country was down by 4.4% y-o-y in October, and year-to-date production is currently down by 5.6% y-o-y, hence the projected decline in coking coal imports.
Dry Bulk trade outlook, CLARKSON Research Services limited, Volume 15, No. 12. December, 2009