A special anomaly is still shown by coking coal, which has risen in price for the main consumer - the metallurgy of China - almost 5 times over the year. This, naturally, set the trend for the world prices of this raw material.
The process started almost a year ago and has accelerated recently. Since August 2020, coal for metallurgy has already demonstrated the third wave of price increases. By October 2021, it has doubled the price dynamics of thermal (thermal) coals and ignores the decline in prices for another important raw material - iron ore.
Politics gave the first impetus to the protracted rise in coking coal prices. The growing irritation of the Chinese authorities was affected by various criticism from Australia. After the Australian authorities (following the United States) accused China of hiding information about the origin of the coronavirus, in October 2020, Beijing banned the purchase of Australian coal. Despite the fact that Australia was previously the largest supplier of coking coal to China, imports of which reached 76 million tons per year.
After this ban, the volume of imports of coking coal to China in the first quarter of 2021 fell by 46% YoY, to 11.25 million tons. At the same time, the quarterly volume of Mongolian metallurgical coal exports to China increased to 6.1 million tons (+ 123% compared to the same period last year), while Russian supplies amounted to only 1.4 million tons (+ 8% compared to the same period last year).
According to the Argus agency, the price of premium coking coal for delivery to one of the Chinese ports by the end of March 2021 doubled, to $ 215 per ton, although coking coal in Australian ports was almost half the price. Therefore (in fact, bypassing the ban), supplies of Australian coal to China through re-exporters under the guise of Canadian or American ones became noticeable.
