Australian Newcastle port coal terminals face congestion
The number of vessels queuing to load coal exports at Port Waratah Coal Services' two terminals in eastern Australia's Newcastle port jumped to 42 on Monday from 34 a week ago, according to the Coordinator for the Hunter Valley Coal Chain website, Platts reports.
The coordinator has forecast that the number of vessels waiting in queue at the terminals will grow to 50 by next week, as traders and coal exporters in the Newcastle thermal coal market wrestle with the rising tide of cargo defaults by buyers in China.
Market participants said that up to 10 Australian thermal coal cargoes from Newcastle port may be at risk because customers in China were declining to accept responsibility for the shipments despite agreeing to buy them.
Sellers would then have to find alternative buyers and this could result in shipping delays, traders said.
In a further sign of increasing congestion at the Newcastle port, coal stocks at the PWCS terminals have gone up to 2.6 million mt Monday, a jump from 2.3 million mt a week ago, according to HVCCC's website.
The queue of vessels waiting to load at the PWCS terminals is expected by the coordinator to decline later this month.
"The vessel queue is estimated to be around 32 ships at the end of June based on nominated arrivals of 8.9 million mt and ship-loading of 9.3 million mt," said the coal chain coordinator in a report Sunday.
COAL EXPORTS FROM NEWCASTLE RISE 16% ON WEEK
Newcastle port's three coal terminals, PWCS's Carrington and Kooragang and the NCIG terminal, together increased their shipments of thermal and coking coal exports to 2.45 million mt in the seven-day period to 7:00 am Sydney (21:00 GMT) Monday.
This represents a 16.6% increase on 2.1 million mt shipped in the week before, when ship-loading operations at the port were disrupted by rough weather, Newcastle Port Corp. said previously.
Last week, 23 ships loaded coal at Newcastle port, which indicates an average cargo size for each ship of around 106,000 mt, while two weeks earlier 32 ships loaded roughly the same volume at the port.
The two PWCS terminals were unable to hit their export target of 2 million mt last week - the terminals' ship-loaders managed to load 1.84 million mt of coal on to arriving ships, said the Hunter Valley Coal Chain Coordinator in its report Sunday.
"PWCS ship-loading for the week was 243,000 mt below the PWCS declared outbound throughput [target]," said HVCCC in its report.
Cargo deliveries from New South Wales coal mines to Newcastle port were 2.6 million mt last week, compared with the weekly target of 2.8 million mt, according to HVCCC.
The Hunter Valley coal chain in New South Wales caters to more than 30 mines producing thermal and coking coal and owned by a dozen coal producers including, Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Centennial Coal, Rio Tinto, Xstrata and Yancoal Australia.