NBS: China's August coal output rises 2.8% YoY

China's output of all types of coal increased by 2.8% on year to reach 396.55 million tonnes in August, according to the latest release from China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on September 14. The figure was also higher than the 390.37 million tonnes produced in July.

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On a daily basis, coal production in August averaged 12.79 million tonnes/day, up from July's daily average of 12.59 million tonnes, the NBS data showed.

For the first eight months this year, China produced about 3.05 billion tonnes of coal, down by a slight 0.3% from the same period last year, the data showed.

The heatwaves that continued to sweep across much of China in August led householders to run air conditioners and other cooling appliances nearly nonstop to survive the hottest month. The surge in electricity use had driven up domestic power demand and encouraged coal miners to boost production at that time, as reported.

Meanwhile, thermal power generation finally resumed growing in August, rising by 3.7% from a year earlier to 614.9 billion kWh. The uptick showed that domestic power utilities had consumed more steam coal to generate power last month to supplement a falloff in hydropower due to reduced rainfall in some parts of China.

Though hydroelectricity generation reached 163.5 billion kWh in August, the on-year growth in hydropower output slowed to 10.7%, compared to the punchy 36.2% growth seen in July.

In the steelmaking sector, China produced about 40.89 million tonnes of metallurgical coke in August, down by 2.1% on year and 1.6% on month, the data showed. This brought the total met coke output for the first eight months of this year to about 324.8 million tonnes, down 0.4% from the same period last year.

The country's steel sector was facing its seasonal slowdown in August, typically a dull month for steel consumption. Many steelmakers also conducted maintenance on their blast furnaces and slashed hot metal output, which meant those mills with coke ovens consumed less coking coal. Domestic coke producers cut production as well, in response to the sluggish coke demand and the coke price collapse in August, meaning they too required fewer coal feeds, Mysteel Global notes.

Written by Winnie Han, hanyueran@mysteel.com

Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com