Coke price will stop falling in March

Asian Metal: Good afternoon, Mr. Guo. Thanks a lot for agreeing to the interview. Please could you briefly introduce your company background and main business?

Hebei Yuzhou Coking Co.,Ltd was established in the year of 1994, located at the corner of eastern ring road and 309 national road, 1 km from the railway station, with an annual output of 2 million tons of coke, and import and export qualifications.

It is a very import enterprise both in Handan City and Wuan City. This company pursues "customer first, reputation first, beyond myself, go to international" the quality policy. To persist in a multi-industry and multi-categories developing direction, we try to build the company into an outstanding enterprise that is safe, environmentally-friendly and harmonious.

Asian Metal: Mr. Guo, please briefly introduce your company coke production and sales situation at this stage.

Under the pressure of environmental protection, our production rate decreases to around 70% currently. We have around 10,000 tons of coke at hand, as the price keeps dropping.

Asian Metal: The domestic coke price keeps dropping after the Chinese New Year. What is the main reason for this in your consideration?

On one hand, coking plants all have coke inventory during the Spring Festival and they urgent to sell after the holiday. On the other hand, some steel plants have not resumed production due to the pressure of environmental pressure. The supply of coke exceeds the requirement, so the price keeps dropping.

Asian Metal: Some insiders are pessimistic about the future coke market. How much do you think the price of coke will drop in the near future?

Now the price of coke has dropped to low level and most coking plants are losing money now. More and more coking plants will reduce production due to the pressure of environmental protection and expanding losses. I think that the price of coke will not drop much in the near future, if coking coal remains firm.

Asian Metal: Where do you sell your coke?

A half of our coke is sold to Hebei province, the other half is used for exporting.

Asian Metal: I know your coke quality is very good and many of our foreign customers want to cooperate with coking plants directly. How do you think the export business?

Our company has been doing coke export business, We exported around 1.1 million tons in the year of 2015, and 500,000 tons last year. Both Nippon steel and Thyssen Krupp are our customers, and we also have some India customers. But since India anti-dumping taxes on Chinese coke from December 2016, we haven't exports to India. Hope through the cooperation with Asian Metal to extend our export business in the future.

Asian Metal: Hebei Province will reduce 31.86 million tons of iron and steel in the year of 2017, how do you think this policy will affect the coke market?

Steel production will be reduced, while coke production capacity is also decreasing at the same time in Hebei Province. There has been six million tons of coke production capacity has been eliminated last year. And coking plants will reduce more production due to the environmental protection in the near future. So I do not think the steel production decrease will have too much influence on coke market.

Asian Metal: Thanks so much for your time and wish you and your company all the best.