Pressure grows for discounts in met markets

摘要

major buyers are continuing to demand heavy discounts on a large number of met coal products, despite broad acceptance of higher benchmark pricing on premium brands following last month's settlements led by Anglo Coal and South Korea's POSCO.The pressure comes amid gathering reports of major met producers, BHP Billiton and Teck Resources, offering spot/monthly hard coking tonnage into private Indian buyers at discounts to contract benchmarks.As earlier indicated by MCR, major met shippers have largely settled their premium July-September (Q3) contract business with major customers, as typified by Indian state-controlled producers, SAIL and RINL (Vizag) 'passing on' pricing based on the Anglo/ POSCO $225/t FOB headline {see separate story).