The most recently released data as of June 19th shows the daily coal burn rate at China’s six major coastal power plants has come in at 779,000 tons.  This is 3% stronger than was seen one week prior, marks the highest daily burn seen since February, and is up year-on-year by 3%. 

As we have been highlighting, the ongoing strengthening in coal burn remains very much in line with various coronavirus restrictions recently being eased across China.  Warm weather also continues to contribute to the strong burn.  Overall, the burn rate remains most important to us for further gauging China’s current industrial production and its near-term industrial production prospects (rather than simply gauging what to expect for coal imports).  It remains encouraging that year-on-year growth has been maintained recently.