DAILY: China's met coke 2nd-round cuts take effect, third round on the cards

China's metallurgical coke market weakened further on July 29 as key steel mills pushed through a second round of coke price cuts, lowering their procurement prices by Yuan 50/tonne ($7.4/t) for wet-quench coke and Yuan 55/t for dry-quench coke. With steel margins now close to breakeven and steel demand still soft, market participants widely expect a third round of price cuts for the steelmaking raw material within weeks.

Mysteel Coke Index (MCI) CDQ, which tracks China's national dry-quenched quasi-first-grade met coke prices, sat at Yuan 1,892.6/t on Wednesday, falling Yuan 53.8/t from a day ago, while the MCI CWQ for wet-quenched quasi-first-grade met coke declined Yuan 45.2/t to Yuan 1,748.8/t. The latest price cuts left first-grade wet-quench coke