Coal Miners' Boon a Burden for Others
By Business Day
10 Apr 2008 at 10:08 AM GMT-04:00
resourceinvestor.com
JOHANNESBURG (Business Day) -- Prospects for coal miners are pretty hot, but this is not great news for everyone.
Rising coal prices are part of a broader upswell in commodity prices on the back of surging demand from emerging economies, particularly China, and tight supply constraints.
Anglo American [Nasdaq:AAUK; LSE:AAL; JSE:AGL], a major coal producer, and BHP Billiton [NYSE:BHP; LSE:BLT; JSE:BIL], the world’s largest coal miner, made big gains on the JSE yesterday, with Anglo up 5% to R521.50 and BHP Billiton up 7% to R273.80. Zimbabwe’ s Hwange Colliery [JSE:HCCL] was up 3.62% to 830 cents.
Yesterday, Nippon Steel [TYO:5401] said it would pay the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance triple the price it paid for coking coal last year, at $300 a tonne. The price of thermal coal, used in power stations, has also risen sharply.
Thermal coal exporter Xstrata [LSE:XTA] this month won a deal to supply Japan’s Chubu Electric at $125 a tonne, a 125% increase over the previous year. The higher cost of coking coal will push up steel prices.
Higher steel prices affect a range of industries. Yesterday, Tata Motors [NYSE:TTM] MD Ravi Kant complained that high steel prices were affecting the profitability of the automotive industry.
In South Africa, the effect will add to a growing number of rising manufacturing and industrial input costs. And, of course, Eskom is likely to request another round of fairly big electricity tariff increases at about the same time next year.
This article is from Business Day’s The Bottom Line, edited by Edward West. |
