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Jindal Mozambique semi-hard coking coal shipping at $80/mt FOB

Jindal Steel and Power's Mozambique coking coal is suffering from poor market conditions and shipping at $80/mt FOB Beira port, Jindal Africa's head of human resources, Anoop Kumar, said Monday. The product is a high-ash semi-hard coking coal with about 27-30% volatile matter, which is currently only being sold internally to parent company JSPL in India.

High logistical costs in Mozambique are also a problem, Kumar said at Informa's Mozambique Coal conference in Maputo, and the company is considering alternatives for bringing its coal to Beira, including a $900 million, 490-kilometer slurry pipeline for both coking and thermal coal.

The slurry solution would require 10 million cubic meters/year of water to be pumped from the Zambezi. Operating costs for the slurry pipeline would be $10/mt, Kumar said.

JSPL requires 1.5 million mt of coking coal per year, which will grow to 3.5 million mt by 2016-17, and 6.5 million mt by 2018-20, Kumar said. This is to be split 50/50 between premium hard coking coal and semi-hard coking coal. Jindal expects Indian import demand for coking coal to grow to 43 million mt in 2015 and 57 million by 2020, up from 40 million mt in 2014.

Source: Platts