BEIJING: Chinese coking coal and coke futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange jumped on Wednesday, boosted by restocking demand at steel mills as supply of the materials is relatively tight ahead of Lunar New Year holidays.
"Demand for coke is relatively strong as utilisation rates at mills recovered after Tangshan lifted smog alert," analysts with Haitong Futures wrote in a note, adding that steelmakers are piling up stocks amid concerns of logistics disruptions due to unfavourable weather and the pandemic situation.
Affected by recent COVID-19 outbreak, transportation has slowed while production at coal mines declined ahead of the Spring Festival holidays, leading to relatively tight supply of coking coal, according to the note.
Dalian coking coal hits over 2-month high
The most actively traded coking coal futures on the Dalian bourse gained 3% to 2,330 yuan ($366.02) per tonne as of 0302 GMT. Coke prices increased 1.4% to 3,181 yuan.
Benchmark iron ore futures on the Dalian exchange, for May delivery, jumped 2.7% to 735 yuan per tonne. Spot prices of iron ore with 62% iron content for delivery to China rose $1.5 to $129 a tonne on Tuesday, according to SteelHome consultancy.
Construction steel rebar on the Shanghai Futures Exchange advanced 1.9% to 4,615 yuan a tonne.
Hot rolled coils, used in the manufacturing sector, leaped 1.6% to 4,740 yuan a tonne.
Shanghai stainless steel futures, for February delivery, rose for the third straight session, up 2.5% to 18,025 yuan a tonne.
China's factory-gate prices rose 10.3% in December, slowing from November and failed market expectation following government measures to contain high raw material prices, data from the statistics bureau showed.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.