December 03, 2008

POSCO blinks on coking coal benchmark price for 2008

It is reported that the world's fourth largest steelmaker POSCO has agreed to a tripling in the price of coking coal from an Australian miner. The deal, which took effect from April 1 for fiscal 2008, came after floods in Australia reduced global supplies.

Ms Ko Min Jin a spokeswoman of POSCO said that "We agreed to a 205% to 210% price increase for some of the coking coal provided by an Australian company, which we cannot identify.”

He added that "The rise is applied to only part of our Australian supplies.”

POSCO said it could not disclose the new price. But it previously purchased coal from the same company for about USD 98 a tonne, meaning the latest price would be around USD 299 to USD 304 a tonne.

Australian suppliers in total provide 60% of POSCO's entire coking coal imports.