Coal news and updates

Rake shortage affecting supplies of imported coal from ports to plants: trader

June 30: Restricted availability of rakes for transportation of imported coal from ports to consumption points is affecting supplies, an official of a leading coal importer said.

“There is indeed demand for imported coal, but consumers are not getting their material due to restricted availability of rakes as we are unable to supply the material from port to their consumption points,” the official said.

Incidentally, Coal India Ltd (CIL) is believed to be facing rake shortage because of which its off-take is likely to remain affected in the month of June.

“The problem is not restricted to lack of availability of rakes from the Indian Railways, but is also related to congestion at some ports like Dhamra,” said an official of a second coal trading company.

“A number of cape vessels are lined up at Dhamra port, but they have limited handling capacity. There is huge waiting period at the port and as such traders are incurring huge demurrage losses,” he said.

The average demurrage charges for a cape vessel is anywhere between $15000 and $20000 per day.

ICMW had reported a few days back that Dhamra has coal handling capacity of 1.00 million tons per month, but it handled 1.7 mt of coal in May and 1.2 mt in April as a number of new companies like Adani and SAIL started using the port for unloading of coal from cape size vessels.