Sydney:Coal exports from the Port Kembla Coal Terminal in Australia’s New South Wales state fell to 386,280 mt in July, from continuous impact of lower volumes coming from South32’s Illawarra Metallurgical Coal’s operations.
Register Now The figure is down 22% year on year from 494,942 mt and 59% weaker than the approximate 951,151 mt seen in June, data from the port operator showed Wednesday.
The monthly total extrapolated implies an annualized rate of 4.55 million mt, which is fairly well in tune with the 2017-2018 fiscal year (July-June) total of 4.72 million mt, but far below the 8.04 million mt shipped the year prior which was before the current ongoing issues at IWC’s Appin mine.
Last month, a PKCT spokesman said he expected the terminal’s exports to total 6.7 million mt in the current fiscal year.
South32 has previously said it expected IWC’s production, which was 4.24 million mt in 2017-2018 — down 40% from 7.07 million mt the year before — to climb to more than 6 million mt in fiscal 2018-2019 and return to historical annualized rates of above 8 million mt in January-June of 2020.
Stockpiles of coal at PKCT stood at 389,950 mt on Tuesday. There were no ships queuing or assembled at the time, according to the operator.
PKCT services the Southern and Western coal fields in New South Wales. It exports high quality metallurgical and thermal coal to customers around the world.
