Australian coal exports from Gladstone port drop 11% MoM in January

A slump in coal shipments from Gladstone to China mainly led to the overall export decline last month, Mysteel Global observed.

According to the GPC data, coal cargoes shipped to China hit the lowest level in a year at 239,127 tonnes, tumbling 80% on month.

Chinese buyers might have slowed shipments from the port in January, after importing 1.2 million tonnes in December last month, the highest volume in 13 months, market analysts noted.

Meanwhile, exports to Japan and India dropped 7.6% and 15.4% on month, reaching 1.83 million tonnes and 876,082 tonnes in January, respectively.

In contrast, deliveries to South Korea last month surged 64% on month to 1.64 million tonnes, with Korea following Japan as the second-largest export market for coal shipped via Gladstone port, the data showed.

Compared with the previous year, however, January coal exports from Gladstone jumped sizably by 18.4%. By country, exports to Japan, China and Korea climbed 35%, 43.7% and 14% on year respectively, while shipments to India recorded a 4.5% decline from the year-ago level, according to historical data.

Gladstone is a major export conduit for coal mined in the central Queensland coal fields, with metallurgical coal accounting for about 70% of its total coal throughput, Mysteel Global notes.

Written by Adrian Zhou, zhouwenhaoa@mysteel.com

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