NBS: China's September coal output rises 4.4% YoY

On a daily basis, coal production in September averaged about 13.82 million tonnes/day, above the August average of 12.79 million t/d, according to the NBS data.

Over the first three quarters of 2024, China produced about 3.48 billion tonnes of coal, up by a slight 0.6% on year, the statistics showed. China remains the world's top coal producer and consumer.

Moreover, demand for steam coal from power utilities remained solid last month, which encouraged domestic coal miners to extract more of the fuel to meet the firm electricity demand.

Thermal power generation, mostly through coal burning, reached 545.1 billion kWh in September, falling 11.4% from August but higher by 8.9% on year. In contrast, hydropower generation slumped by 14.6% on year to 119.9 billion kWh, the data showed.

Regarding coking coal, both the steel and coke production sectors finally recovered last month after a prolonged weakness in summer, as September and October are seasonally strong months for domestic steel consumption. Many blast furnace steel mills ramped up their production after clawing back more margins, Mysteel Global noted.

China produced about 39.32 million tonnes of coke in September, down by 5.3% on year and 3.8% on month, the NBS data showed. This brought total met coke output for the first nine months of this year to about 364.4 million tonnes, down 1.2% from the same period last year.

Chinese coking plants grappled with severe financial headwinds during the first half of September, and it was only after their financial conditions showed signs of recovery later in the month that a number of plants resumed scaling up production gradually, as reported.

Written by Winnie Han, hanyueran@mysteel.com

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