Coal news and updates

Global Miner, Vale Mozambique SA Brazilian mining major Vale had fixed a vessel to carry a 70,000 metric ton of metallurgical coal cargo from Nacala in Mozambique to Port Kembla in Australia loading on Friday, APA has observed.The company said in a media statement to APA that this would be the first direct shipment of Nacala met coal to Port Kembla.

 

The mining giant said the import of Mozambique coal is symbolic because Australia is the largest seaborne exporter of met coal in the world, the bulk of which is premium HCCs, prized for its high CSR.

 

Australia exported 172 million mt of met coal in 2016, according to a Goldman Sachs January 2017 report, or 66 percent of the seaborne volume, based on the same report. The global seaborne met coal market was estimated at 259 million mt in 2016.

 

“Steelmakers are looking to diversify their purchases too,” said a ship chartering source with a mining major, adding there have also been iron ore imports into Australia.

 

“This is an interesting flow, and the vessel will be going from one loading location to another, one from where they can almost for certain find a cargo with very little ballast,” the statement said.

 

Australian domestic steelmaker Bluescope Steel is a major met coal end-user located near Port Kembla, according to the Port Kembla Coal Terminal official website.

The main met coal products produced by Vale in Mozambique are premium mid-vol and premium low-vol HCCs.

 

Brazil is launching a top-level drive to expand its economic ties with Africa, a sign of how crises in the rich world are pushing faster-growing emerging economies to trade and invest among themselves.

 

Vale has invested $2 billion in its Moatize coal mine in northwest Tete province, and plans to plough another $6.4 billion into a region wrecked by the 1977-1992 civil war.

 

The former Portuguese colony, which emerged from civil war two decades ago, boasts some of the world’s largest untapped coal reserves and is discovering vast natural gas deposits along its white-sand Indian Ocean coast.

Source: Journal du Cameroun