Platts to launch additional met coal assessments

Effective August 2, Platts will launch daily spot market price assessments of hard coking coal (metallurgical coal) of Goonyella quality specifications, basis FOB Australia, CFR China and CFR India.

Hard coking coal (HCC) of Goonyella spec has the following typical properties: coke strength after reaction (CSR) of 68%, volatile matter (VM) of 24.3%; ash of 8.9%; sulfur (S) of 0.52%; phosphorous (P) of 0.025%; total moisture (TM) of 10.0% as received; and max fluidity of 1100 ddpm. Other spot cargoes of high-quality hard coking coal meeting minimum quality standards (CSR of 60% min; Max Dilatation of min 50%, and VM of between min 18.0% and max 26.0%), will be normalized by daily spot-market and Value-In-Use analyses to the HCC Goonyella specification.

HCC Goonyella assessments reflect the value of high quality hard coking coal shipments loading FOB Australia main ports (normalized to Hay Point port in Queensland) for any destination and for delivery into China (normalized to Qingdao port in North China) and into India (normalized to Paradip port in East India). Platts already publishes daily dry bulk freight assessments for Panamax class vessels from Australia to China and India. Close-of-market data for assessments is 18:30 Singapore time (1030 GMT).

Please address any comments or questions to cokingcoal@platts.com.

To view the Platts metallurgical coal methodology and specifications guide, please visit the following link:

http://www.platts.com/IM.Platts.Content/MethodologyReferences/MethodologySpec s/metcoalmethod.pdf or http://bit.ly/metcoalmethod