Combined coal stocks at three delivery terminals in Northwest Europe’s Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp trading hub continued to rise to post a new 2017 high this week, pushing up to 5.8 million mt, data collected from port sources showed Wednesday.
This was the highest level recorded since early 2015, according to S&P Global Platts historical data, with several sources reporting that inventories across the ARA region as a whole were now likely to be over 6 million mt.
The majority of sources canvassed agreed that the 156,000 mt — or around 2.8% — build in stocks over the week was due to slow reloading activity from end users, rather than a marked increase in arrivals.
“There’s still a lot less demand among end-users because the stocks are very high at the power plants,” one source close to a port facility said. “We see less reloading activity onto barges and rail cars again this week, and there have been a few more arrivals [versus the previous week] but it’s [the arrival volume] more or less in line with what we would expect for the time of year.”
Combined stock levels posted the strongest year-on-year increase on record at 79.2% according to Platts calculations, but this was moving from a low base given that inventories had touched some of the lowest levels recorded moving into summer 2016.
Stocks at the EMO dry bulk terminal in Rotterdam reached levels unseen since late 2014 at 3.1 million mt, which was an increase of 200,000 mt over the week, while the OVET dry bulk terminal in Vlissingen also posted a more marginal increase of 56,000 mt to reach 346,000 mt.
The only facility to show a reduction over the week was OBA Bulk Amsterdam’s terminal, where stocks had slipped 100,000 mt to 2.35 million mt, although this was still close to 1 million mt higher than levels seen during the same week in 2016.
Several sources said that arrivals had now more or less peaked, as activity on schedules was expected to slow in the coming weeks.
Stocks would take a while to normalize, however, as end-user demand was not expected to increase significantly moving into the summer.
CIF ARA coal prices have seen a slow down slide since peaking in early April, largely taking their direction from the Asian market where the underlying sentiment is becoming increasingly bearish.
An increase in European trading activity had provided some support to prices over the previous week, however, stemming losses somewhat.
Platts assessed the price of European-delivered CIF ARA thermal coal basis 6,000 kcal/kg NAR and for delivery within the next 15-60 days at $72.20/mt Tuesday, a reduction of $2.30 on the week.
Source: Platts