On December 9, 2018, the merchant vessel Furness Victoria arrived at Kandla Port in Gujarat on the west coast of India. It carried about 52,000 MT of thermal coal that originated from New Zealand.

The vessel was loaded around November 10, 2018 at Lyttelton on the eastern coast of the South Island of New Zealand.

The coal was sourced by Iman Resources which specializes in supplying US high calorific value Appalachian coal (NAPP and CAPP) and Illinois basin (ILB) coal exported from US East Coast and US Gulf Coast.

The India end-user was Shree Cement, which used the coal for its merchant and captive power plants. The coal has a net calorific value of 5,500 kcal/kg with a sulfur content of about 3%.

Notably, Indian non-coking coal imports in the month of December have almost been on par with the imports in November, as per the vessel lineup data compiled by CoalMint Research.

In Dec’18, India’s non-coking coal imports of around 15.00 million tonnes (MnT) were only 0.65% higher on a month-to-month basis, as compared to 14.91 MnT imported in Nov’18.

On year-on-year basis, however, the country’s non-coking imports have surged by about 20.34% to around 176 MnT in CY 2018 against 146 MnT in CY 2017.

Source: https://www.coalmint.com/news/india-imports-first-non-coking-coal-cargo-from-new-zealand-129678