Thermal and semi-soft coking coal shipments from eastern Australia's Newcastle port fell 15.8% week on week to 2.54 million mt for the week ended April 7, and were loaded on to 28 ships, said Newcastle Port Corp in its latest weekly update Monday.
For the previous week ended April 1, total 3.02 million mt of coal was loaded by the port on to 30 coal ships.
Newcastle port's coal exports have fluctuated between 2.3 million mt and 3 million mt over the past six weeks on a combination of factors including, dredging to deepen the port's shipping channel, and falling fixtures for Newcastle in the vessel freight market recently.
Port Waratah Coal Services shipped 2 million mt of coal through its two coal terminals on to 23 ships in the seven-day period ended April 7, said the Hunter Valley Coal Chain Coordinator in a report Sunday.
The Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group terminal would have accounted for the remaining 540,000 mt of coal exports from Newcastle port last week, according to Platts' calculations based on Newcastle and PWCS export data.
More ships were queuing off Newcastle port Monday, compared with a week ago on April 1, when only five ships were waiting off the port for a berth to load coal shipments.
"There are 13 vessels off the port waiting to load. There are seven vessels in the port loading," said NPC in its latest coal shipments report, Monday.
A total of 39 ships were steaming towards the port to load coal at Newcastle's three terminals on Monday, compared with 50 ships on their way to the port on April 1.
Newcastle coal chain officials are expecting there to be a reduction in ship numbers waiting at the port over the next few weeks.
The Hunter Valley Coal Chain Coordinator said in its report that the number of ships in the PWCS vessel queue was expected to fall to 15 by the end of April based on terminal demand for coal exports of 8.7 million mt.
"At PWCS, there were 21 vessels in the offshore queue at the end of the week," said HVCCC in its latest operating report.
Ship numbers in a port's vessel queue are a reliable indicator of cargo demand, according to market sources.
