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Top 5 Chinese power cos suffer 80% H1 loss in coal business

The top five Chinese power companies posted an 80% deficit in their coal business in the first half of the year, as hit by sagging demand amid a faltering economy.

Huadian Group, one of these leading power producers, had only three mines in profit during the same period, with the remaining mines in loss taking a portion of 81.3%.

With regard to coal business, Huaneng Group incurred the biggest loss of 1.63 billion yuan ($266 million) over January-June, while Huadian Group lost 460 million yuan, Datang Group 400 million yuan, Guodian Group 240 million yuan and China Power Investment Group 210 million yuan.

Since 2013, coal business of the leading five power groups has started to become loss-making from profit-making owing to sliding prices amid an excess of supply, registering a deficit of 2.44 billion yuan that year, in stark contrast to a profit of 7 billion yuan in 2012 and 10.1 billion in 2011.

In order to ease losses in coal business, these power groups chose to consume more coal for self-use. Over January-June, Datang met 84.4% of coal demand from self-produced supplies, China Power Investment 77.7%, Huaneng 59.3%, Guodian 40.2% and Huadian 41.8%.

As the largest power producer in China, Huaneng had a capacity of 86.6 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), and produced 30.56 million tonnes of raw coal in the first half of the year and sold 30.41 million tonnes.

With a capacity of 73.5 mtpa, China Power Investment registered 30.21 million tonnes of raw coal production and 29.67 million tonnes of coal sales during the same period.

With a capacity of 66.79 mtpa, Guodian’s output of raw coal and coal sales reached 26.45 million and 26.23 million tonnes, respectively, over January-June.

With a capacity of 64.95 mtpa, Huadian saw its raw coal production and coal sales at 24.58 million and 21.94 million tonnes, respectively, during the same period.

Datang had the least capacity of 14.89 mtpa and produced 4.86 million tonnes of raw coal in the same period, while coal sales amounted to 2.79 million tonnes.

source: http://en.sxcoal.com