Coal trucks jammed in Shanxi’s Lvliang on emission checks
“Trucks with coal from Liulin have been stuck in an endless queue at at the highway checkpoints from Liulin county to Fenyang city, both in Lvliang area,” an official from a large-sized coal mining company in Shanxi shared the observation.
Liulin is a core production base for low-sulphur coking coal, which is 100km away from Fenyang, where the truck drivers will direct the deliveries to Hebei, Shandong, and Liaoning in North, East and Northeast China.
Speed of checks on emissions by trucks has been remarkably slowed down in Shanxi in general in the past two months with the provincial authority’s imposing thorough checks on diesel-fuelled trucks over August 15-December 31 as a part of the pollution control efforts, the official said, and the Lvliang government has gone extra miles by setting the cap on the number of trucks on the highway to control emission at a lower level, he added.
On the other hand, demand for coking coal from Shanxi has been booming, with coking plants and steelmakers in Northeast, North and East China have commenced restocking for the winter since late September to guarantee normal operations over November-March as coal mining and transportation tends to be with hiccups now and then.
Coking coal prices from Shanxi, China’s core production base that contributed to the country’s 50% of supply, therefore, is expected to surge in the near term, partly due to higher transportation costs.
Logistics companies that are taking care of coal delivery recently have raised their trucking charges by 4.5% over the past two months to Yuan 230/t ($33/t) as of October 18 for the 900-km route from Liulin to Tangshan in North China’s Hebei province, and the charge up 6.5% to Yuan 245/t for the 920-km route from Xiaoyi of Lvliang to Rizhao in East China.
As of Thursday, the price of coking coal with 9.5% ash and 0.7% sulphur in Lvliang grew 2.5% on month or 5.2% over the past two months to Yuan 1,630/t EXW and including 16% VAT, and the national coke price has been persisting at a high level since the beginning of this year, recorded at Yuan 2,390/t including 16% VAT as of October 18.
“Inventories at the coking coal mines in Shanxi have been running low all this year, with some having zero tonnage nowadays, selling off all that they are producing,” an analyst in Shanghai in East China noted.
Accumulative and panicky buying saw coking coking coal stocks at 230 independent coke makers in China hit an eight-month high of 14.67 million tonnes, and that at the 110 steel mills also at the year’s high of 8.12 million tonnes, according to Mysteel’s survey on October 19.
Written by Sean Xie, xiepy@mysteel.com
Edited by Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com
India: Should govt consider including coking coal in critical mineral list?
Feb 06, 2024 10:00
Challenges in China's coking coal industry: impact of prices on steel mills
Dec 07, 2023 08:30
WEEKLY: Chinese wash-plant met coal stocks slide
Apr 26, 2023 16:15
FLASH: Mongolian coal short-haul trucking fees down to 7-m low
Apr 04, 2023 09:57
WEEKLY: Imported coking coal prices exhibit mixed trends
May 31, 2022 12:45