CANBERRA: Twenty one ships are set to load coal export cargoes at Australia’s port of Newcastle this week, down from 34 a week ago and the lowest weekly number for 13 months, the Port Authority of New South Wales said Monday.
“There are 21 vessels with a notified arrival time allocated and in transit,” said the port authority in a report at 7 am Sydney time (2100 GMT). The last time Newcastle’s shipping queue dipped below 20 ships was in mid-August 2014 at eight, although it quickly recovered to 40 by month’s end.
An additional 13 ships were waiting off the port at anchor for a loading berth in the port this week, and another eight were berthed and taking on coal cargoes at Newcastle port, according to the report. Over the seven days to 7 am Sydney time Monday, 34 ships entered Newcastle port and loaded coal exports at its three coal terminals, the port authority said in the report.
Each ship waited an average of six days to be allocated a berthing slot, it added. Newcastle port’s vessel queue is a good indicator of marginal demand for coal exports as customers send more ships when they are short of supply. A major customer of Newcastle coal exports is Japan, and its power utilities have been less active as buyers in the spot market over the past month, according to market sources.
The vessel queue for the two coal terminals at Newcastle port operated by Port Waratah Coal Services slumped to levels last seen in April, according to a separate report Sunday by the logistics coordinator for the Hunter Valley coal field supply chain for exports.
“At PWCS there were 13 vessels in the offshore queue at the end of the week,” the Hunter Valley Coal Chain Coordinator said in its report. There is some overlap in the vessel counts of the port authority and HVCCC regarding ships waiting directly offshore Newcastle port. The third coal terminal at Newcastle port, operated by Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group, does not routinely release shipping queue or export volume data.
HVCCC, comprising around 40 mines operated by 12 coal companies, is forecasting a further fall in vessel queues for the PWCS terminals. “Based on terminal demand, the queue at PWCS is estimated to be 13 at the end of August and fewer than 10 at the end of September,” HVCCC said.
There was a pickup in coal export volumes from the PWCS terminals last week to 2.17 million mt after falling to 1.79 million mt the week before, when volumes were impacted by three days of rail maintenance.
Twenty-one ships loaded coal exports at Port Waratah’s Carrington and Kooragang terminals last week, HVCCC said in its report. Coal shipments from the PWCS terminals totaled 9 million mt in July and stood at 9.9 million mt in August to date on Sunday, according to HVCCC data.
