Coal news and updates

Russian private investment vehicle Volga Group said Wednesday it had bought a 50% stake in Sukhodol LLC, a company building a 20 million mt/year capacity coal export terminal on Russia's far eastern seaboard.

 

The terminal will be in Sukhodol Bay in the Primorsky region and will be used to export Russian coal to Asian-Pacific markets including Korea, India, China and Japan.

 

A Volga spokesman said the main client of the terminal would be Russian producer, SDS-Coal, which produces both thermal coal and metallurgical coal.

 

"[SDS-Coal] will handle coal from other producers on market terms but [no provisional capacity agreements] have been signed yet," he said.

Construction is due to begin in the third quarter of 2014, with the first phase of the project, totalling 6 million mt/year of capacity, scheduled to be completed by 2016.

 

Construction of the second and third phases will take place in 2019-2021, Volga said. It did not disclose how much it paid for the 50% stake.

 

Volga's core strategic investment areas are energy, logistics and infrastructure and it currently holds stakes in trading house Gunvor (44%), gas producer Novatek (23%) and petrochemicals company Sibur (37.3%) among others.

 

 

Source: Platts