China's metallurgical coke market appears to have reached a peaked in the past fortnight and has now started to weaken, while no export activity has been seen, market participants told Metal Bulletin on Thursday September 13.
Steelmakers in the country last week accepted a sixth round of rises in the price of coke since August, which have now totaled 640 yuan ($93) per tonne.East China's Rizhao Iron & Steel started from September 6 to pay 2,640 yuan ($385) per tonne for materials with 57% coke strength after reaction (CSR) delivered to its facility. This was up by 100 yuan per tonne from its previous price.North China's Hesteel raised its purchase price by the same amount, and from the same day. It has been paying 2,800 yuan per tonne for materials with 65% CSR delivered to its facilities.Those figures were based on production restrictions imposed on cokeries in the country's main producing province of Shanxi.Coke producers had been running at lower production rates and with almost no inventories, especially since August 20 when a second round of...