BEIJING- Dalian coking coal futures climbed on Wednesday to their highest levels in more than three months, as supply in northern China was disrupted by the worst storms in more than a decade.
The most-traded September coking coal futures on China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) was up 4 percent at 1,537.5 yuan per metric ton, the highest since April 20 while coke rose nearly 2.5 percent .
“The evident price gain in the coal market is because the transport capacity has been adversely affected by the recent floods in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region,” said Cheng Peng, a Beijing-based analyst at Sinosteel Futures.
“Coking coal transport relies on truck, and therefore was influenced. But impact should be temporary.”
China on Wednesday doubled down on rescue efforts in Zhuozhou, a flooded city of over 600,000 residents southwest of Beijing, as the remnants of Typhoon Doksuri continued to wreak havoc on swathes of the city twice the size of Paris.
Lifting coal market sentiment is also another round of proposal of coke price hike, which is expected to be accepted by steelmakers in the end, as mills need feedstock to sustain production to lock in profits, according to analysts.
