Coal news and updates

Coal keeps hanging in there, but for how long?

Anglo's Australian business could look very different on Wednesday morning. It could shrink its local presence in coal to a couple of mines. 

When Anglo chief executive Mark Cutifani announces its full year earnings on Tuesday, investors will be watching to see that the mining giant is executing its radical overhaul with a sense of urgency. The miner will outline the details of its asset sale plan: how it plans to cull assets from 55 to 20. It is expected to take more write-downs, and to post a 55 to 60 per cent fall in underlying earnings. 

Anglo has a $US4 billion ($5.6 billion) target on asset sales by next year – at least half of which is already locked in – but pressure is mounting to hit the target. While it is trying to offload its higher-cost, lower quality assets first, it is likely have to go further and put some of its higher value assets up for sale too.

That might mean trying to sell some of the metallurgical coal assets in Australia it has been keen to hang on to. Or mothballing the Australian assets it can't sell. 

Anglo already had four coal assets for sale in Australia, as part of its attempt to exit thermal coal. It has struck a deal to offload one to Nathan Tinkler's new outfit Australian Pacific Coal. 

But the market is flooded with sellers, from Anglo and Brazilian miner Vale to Rio Tinto and American group Peabody – and the past six months have yielded very few sales. Rio has managed to get some mines off its books, but its thermal coal assets are the best on the block. 

Take-or-pay contracts have kept some operators in a vice, leaving them with little choice but to keep unprofitable mines in operation. The contracts lock miners into a fixed cost for rail haulage, regardless of whether they actually ship the coal or not – and at current prices, plenty would rather not.

Source: smh.com