Japan's coking coal imports rise in January

Japan's coking coal imports rose in January as it took more shipments from Australia and the US despite increasing spot prices.

Japan imported 6.4mn t of coking coal in January, up by 2pc from December 2019 and an increase of 35pc from a year earlier, according to finance ministry data.

Imports from top supplier Australia rose by 22pc from the previous month to 3.1mn t, while arrivals from the US were up by 29pc to 714,048t. Shipments from Colombia also recorded a month-on-month increase of about 76pc to 90,390t.

Coking coal arrivals from Canada fell by 53pc to 465,465t, while imports from Russia were down by 5pc to 371,967t.

Shipments from Kazakhstan in January totalled 96,330t, up by 46pc against the last shipment of 66,000t in November 2019. Japan did not import any coking coal from Mozambique, China and New Zealand in January.

Imports from Indonesia rose by 2pc to 1.6mn t, although much of this is mislabelled low-ash thermal coal used by steel producers at their captive power plants.

The Argus spot price assessment for premium low-volatile hard coking coal averaged $151.18/t fob Australia in January, up by 11pc from the December average of $136.73/t.

Japan's metallurgical coke imports in January fell by 9pc from the previous month to 30,606t and were substantially below arrivals a year earlier at 99,927t, as Japanese steel mills produced more of their own met coke domestically. Almost all of Japan's met coke imports came from China last month.

By Dylan Wong

source: Argus Media