Philippines’ SMPC looks to raise coal sales to Japan

The Philippines' sole large-scale coal mining firm Semirara Mining and Power (SMPC) is aiming to increase coal exports to Japan in order to diversify its sales destinations and reduce the company's dependence on the Chinese market.

SMPC will ship 50,000t of coal to Japanese utility Shikoku Electric Power for its 700MW coal-fired ultra-supercritical power plant this month, the company said. This would be SMPC's second shipment of coal to Japan, with the first shipment done in January this year when it sold 78,410t of coal to utility JPower, SMPC said.

SMPC said that an expansion of coal sales to Japan will help boost its export sales despite slower sales to China this year. SMPC's coal shipments declined by 50pc on the year in January-March to 1.1mn t, SMPC said without giving a reason for the decline. China accounted for 72pc of SMPC's export sales in January-March, with South Korea second at 20pc of sales, accounting for 300,000t of coal sold during the three month period, SMPC said.

SMPC expects coal exports to account for 30pc of its total sales this year because of weaker sales to China. But higher domestic sales, fuelled by higher sales to SMPC's own coal-fired power plants, are expected to help offset the lower export volume, the company said.

SMPC is targeting total coal sales of 15mn-16mn t this year.

By Antonio delos Reyes