The most recent data as of the end of this month shows that the daily coal burn rate at China’s six major coastal power plants has come in at 727,000 tons, which marks the highest daily burn seen since late March.  This improvement is very much in line with various coronavirus restrictions across the country continuing to be eased.  On a year-on-year basis, this burn rate is also down year-on-year by just 2.5%. 

At present, the burn rate is 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).  We are still not very bullish for China’s coal import prospects, and of note is power plant coal stockpiles across China now stand at approximately 160 MMT.  This can meet 32 days of demand, which is a very robust amount (in comparison, stockpiles in India can meet only 8 days of demand).  As we have also continued to discuss in our research, we still do not expect that any weakness in China’s coal import volume will at all affect total seaborne coal trade volume.  There are easily enough other buyers for thermal coal, and we continue to anticipate that coal supply will simply continue to determine total seaborne coal trade volume.