Indian steel producers lift January PCI imports

Indian imports of the pulverised coal injection (PCI) grade rose in January to combat escalating feedstock costs, while overall coking coal imports were mostly stable.

India's PCI imports in January more than doubled from the previous month to 1,330,895t, according to data from e-commerce company Mjunction. PCI imports during April-January, the first 10 months of the 2018-19 fiscal year, were 6.37mn t.

January shipments of Australian PCI to India also more than doubled from the previous month to 988,930t. India imported 309,145t of Russian PCI in January, up by 99pc from December.

PCI can be used in blast furnace operations to reduce requirements of feedstock met coke and coking coal. The Argus low-volatile PCI index averaged $126.01/t fob Australia in January, while prices for 65 CSR met coke averaged $335.13/t fob China for the month. Prices for premium hard low-volatile coking coal averaged $198.05/t fob Australia.

India imported 340,963t of metallurgical coke in January, down by 22.3pc from December. The main suppliers included Poland with 66,242t, China 45,452t, Australia 45,000t, Japan 41,704t and Russia 35,965t.

Indian coking coal imports in January rose by 3.1pc from the previous month to 3.32mn t. Imports for April-January were 33.34mn t.

Australia remained the largest exporter of coking coal to India in January with 1.94mn t, down by 20.1pc from December. Imports from the US more than quadrupled from a month earlier to 483,242t, while imports from Canada rose by 19.6pc to 481,546. Imports from Mozambique fell by 9.2pc to 227,665t, while imports from Indonesia dropped by 47.9pc to 105,340t.