South African coal exports may rise to 100 million metric tons a year by 2020 and India may become the biggest destination for steam coal, said Xavier Prevost, a coal analyst at XMP Consulting.
“The Asian continent, especially India, is very eager to use more steam coal from South Africa,” Prevost said in a speech at the Coaltrans conference in Johannesburg today. India’s purchases are “increasing and may prove to be our new main trading partner for the future.”
South Africa’s Richards Bay Coal Terminal, Africa’s largest coal-export facility, shipped about 61.8 million tons last year, mainly to Europe. Anglo American Plc, BHP Billiton Ltd. and Xstrata Plc are the largest coal producers in the country.
“Wood MacKenzie expects coal demand in India to grow at a faster rate than any other country in the world,” Dirk Fourie, vice president for consulting in Africa at Wood MacKenzie, said at the conference, adding that South Africa and Indonesia are the largest coal suppliers to India.
Coal India Ltd., the state-owned monopoly producer, said on Aug. 27 it may spend as much as $1.5 billion to buy overseas mines. The country, the world’s most populous nation after China, faces a coal shortage by 2012, Coal India estimates.
While South Africa can supply India with better-quality coal than rival Indonesia, the African country’s coal industry has higher costs and faces logistics constraints, Fourie said. “Rail constraints could limit South Africa’s exports to less than 65 million tons this year,” he said.
Securing long-term coal supply in a “highly unpredictable” international market has become more important than prices, Pradeep Lenka, chief executive officer of thermal coal at Mumbai-based Lanco Infratech Ltd., said at the conference. South Africa has the “right balance” between quality and logistics, he added.
India’s government is building power plants to match electricity demand estimated to rise to 950,000 megawatts by 2030. The country imports between 6 percent and 7 percent of its total coal demand, Lenka said.
South Africa has not successfully diversified its coal exports market to date, Argus Media Ltd. business development manager Jim Nicholson said at the conference. South Africa’s efforts to diversify coal export markets are “not really enough to replace the stagnation in Europe.”
South Africa may ship about 1 million tons coal or more to Taiwan this year, he said, adding the country’s share of the Taiwanese coal imports has fallen to “virtually zero” from about 40 percent in about 1990.
Source: Bloomberg
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