European Coal - Quiet trade on weak demand due to mild weather

Trade in European physical coal was subdued on Wednesday on weak demand due to mild weather, while South African contracts were more active. Cargoes for delivery in March to the ports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp (ARA) were bid at $81.00 per tonne on Wednesday afternoon, 30 cents above Tuesday’s close, with no volume traded. The contract last traded on Feb.5, according to data from the online trading platform globalCOAL. ARA cargoes for delivery in April were bid at $79.20 a tonne, up $0.15 from the previous settlement of $79.05 and last traded on Jan. 24. Traders said demand was low as there was little incentive to stock up on coal due to quite a mild winter in Europe so far. Meanwhile, cargoes for export from South Africa’s Richards Bay Coal Terminal for March delivery traded $0.25 higher at $77.50 a tonne, with 50 lots traded. Cargoes for April delivery, however, fell by $1.10 to $76.75 a tonne, on volume of 50 lots. The decline was likely due to delays in clearing a backlog in coal shipments at the Richards Bay Coal Terminal, traders said. The Richards Bay Coal Terminal said this week it would take seven weeks to clear a backlog in coal shipments after a week-long outage last week. South Africa’s national power supplier Eskom said earlier in the week that electricity supplies would be tight over the next few days due to outages at some of its units. In India, Coal India Ltd, the world’s largest coal miner by output, posted its third straight decline in quarterly profit on Wednesday, on the back of softer prices at coal auctions and lower sales volumes during the period.