Other than high coke consumption among the Chinese steel mills, the reduction in coking coal supplies with lower imports from Mongolia and Australia on the pandemic and China’s curtailment in the overall coal consumption and coking for pollution control have also been supporting the domestic coke prices.
Therefore, Mysteel’s survey among the 230 Chinese independent coking plants showed that their coke stocks had hit its 23-month low of 651,400 tonnes as of November 5.
There was little wonder that the Chinese coking plants have so far achieved six rounds of price increases since mid-August, each time by Yuan 50/tonne ($7.6/t). This is not the end to the surge for 2020, as the coking plants in North and East China are working on the seventh round of price rise by another Yuan 50/tonne ($7.6/t) starting November 11.
