China’s coal, coke futures prices hit limit up

The most-traded January 2022 futures contracts for coking coal and coke on the Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE), and that for thermal coal on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange (ZCE) all reached their limit-up on August 23. Market insiders attributed the jumps to “quite unusual” volatility caused by the sustained tight supplies of these products against a background of supply constraints from major coal export source, Mongolia.

After climbing 8% from last Friday’s settlement prices, on Monday the DCE’s January 2022 coking coal contract closed at Yuan 2,421/tonne ($373.6/t), that for the DCE’s coke contract and ZCE’s for thermal coal also closed at Yuan 3,053.5/t and Yuan 850.2/t respectively, according to the exchange data. Market players were