Call made for consolidation?

摘要

Xstrata pic's chief executive Mick Davis expects thermal coal prices to remain at the current 50-54 US dollars a tonne. Total Australian thermal coal production, he said, should drop by five million tonnes this year. "You go into boom - bust situations when effectively you misread the market and over produce," he noted. Davis said coal demand had standard sets of growth rates over long periods. "It hasn't been the demand side which has wrecked the industry, but an over response on the supply side, and that generally takes place in industries which are not well consolidated - in environments where money was actually quite cheap," Davis said. "In the decade prior to this money became expensive, forcing a consolidation of mining, particularly in coal. "I would like to think that the value of a more consolidated industry is not that big boys get together and try and gerrymander the price.