China’s aversion to Australian coal has prompted a record shipment of the commodity from the US, a top miner has claimed.
Japanese shipowner Nissen Kaiun’s 181,400-dwt Frontier Unity (built 2012) left the port of Newport News, Virginia, in late June with 136,400 tonnes of coal bound for China.
It was the biggest shipment of its kind from a US east coast port, according to Australian-listed miner Coronado Global Resources Inc.
“As a critical global supplier of metallurgical coal, our geographic diversification continues to benefit us as the Chinese import restrictions on Australian coal continue,” Gerry Spindler, Coronado’s chief executive, said in a recent presentation.
“Our US operations continue to successfully move coal into China at record levels.”
BHP, one of the biggest coal producers in Australia, recently said that it expected the ban to remain in place for a number of years.
Indeed, coal shipments from the US to mainland China are surging, according to Banchero Costa’s Singapore-based head of research Ralph Leszczynski.
“In the first six months of 2021, the US shipped 6.3m tonnes of coal to China, which was up 231% year-on-year from the 1.9m tonnes in the same period last year and also up a similar percentage from the 2m tonnes shipped in the same period of 2019,” he said.
Leszczynski said mainland China is now the third top destination for US coal, after India and the European Union, with a 16% share of US coal exports.
“Overall, the US is one of the very few coal exporters who saw an overall increase in export volumes in the first half of this year, up by 12.6% year-on-year to about 40.4m tonnes from 35.9m tonnes in the same period of 2020,” he said.
“Volumes are, however, still lower than the 49.7m tonnes in the first half of 2019.”
From China's perspective, Leszczynski said the US is also now the third largest source of coal, after Indonesia and Russia, accounting for 5.4% of China's total coal imports so far this year.
“From a tonne-mile perspective, this is obviously very positive, as China used to get the vast majority of its coal imports from Australia and Indonesia, and it was therefore primarily a Pacific-only trade,” he told TradeWinds.
“Similarly, the US used to export coal primarily to Europe, Turkey, and Brazil, so it was mostly an Atlantic-only trade.”
