Posted on 10 Jan 2019
Japanese steelmaker JFE Steel has settled its first-quarter 2019 contract for semi-soft coking coal at $131/mt FOB Australia early this week, up $1/mt from Q4 2018, market sources said Wednesday.
The contract was settled with Stanmore Coal for Isaac Plains semi-soft coking coal, market sources said. But quarterly settlement prices for other brands of semi-soft such as Bloomsfield and Yancoal’s semi-soft were not heard Wednesday.
JFE has settled its Q4 2018 price at $130/mt FOB Australia with the same few miners.
Separately, another major Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation is still locked in negotiations for its Q4 2018 semi-soft quarterly contracts that are settled retroactively, market sources said.
Platts assessed semi-soft coking coal FOB Australia at $118.70/mt Tuesday.
Early December 2018, JFE Steel settled its Q1 2019 pulverized coal injection contract with coking coal miner Peabody for its Australian Low Vol Coppabella PCI with 12%-14% VM, 9%-10% ash at $141/mt FOB Australia.
