India’s February thermal coal import declines marginally to 8.5mt

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India’s February 2018 thermal coal import declined by 5% to 8.5 million tonnes.

At 4.7 million tonnes the largest quantity – 55% of the total import – was from Indonesia. However, on a year-on-year basis this was a 30% decline. 

Meanwhile imports from South Africa recorded a meteoric rise in the month. The country imported about 2.17 million tonnes of coal from there against 0.25 million tonnes in February last year, shipping data collected by Indoen showed.

Cement manufacturers are the largest consumer of South African coal in India. A Mumbai-based trader said that the sector these days is increasingly replacing the pet coke with thermal coal and this is behind pushing the demand up for coal from there.

The overall decline in import was contrary to the expectations of traders and industry insiders. However, they expect the jump in January would be continued through summer months ahead.

“The coal stock position at thermal power plants is better compared to last year but we expect a pick-up in demand in the summer months especially May and June in north India. So imports are likely to remain high during the next two to three months,” the trader said.