Newcastle Weekly Coal Exports Fall; Ship Queue Rises

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

30 Sep 2009

Coal shipments from Australia’s Newcastle port, the world’s biggest export harbor for the fuel, fell 16.9 percent last week while the number of vessels waiting to load increased. The volume exported in the week ended 7 a.m. local time yesterday dropped to 1.8 million metric tons from 2.1 million tons a week earlier, Newcastle Port Corp. said on its Web site. Twenty-seven ships, waiting to load 2.7 million tons of coal, were outside the harbor, up from 26 vessels.
Coal ships queued to load for an average 11.8 days, up from 10.6 days a week earlier, Newcastle Port said today. The waiting time compared with 0.29 day for general-cargo vessels, it said.
Power-station coal prices at Newcastle port, a benchmark for Asia, fell 0.3 percent to $69.72 a ton in the week ended Sept. 25, according to the globalCOAL NEWC Index. Rio Tinto Group, Xstrata Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. are among mining companies that ship coal through the harbor.

Source: Bloomberg