[Ferro-Alloys.com] None of the firms operating large thermal coal assets in Australia were profitable in July-December when high grade thermal coal prices were around $50/t fob Newcastle, but all expect to be profitable at current prices of around $80/t.

Chinese firm Yancoal, Swiss trading and mining firm Glencore, UK-Australian mining firm BHP and Australian independent Whitehaven all posted losses at the earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) level for their thermal coal businesses in Australia, indicating that prices for all grade coals were too low to cover production costs.

Yancoal benefited from some of the lowest costs in Australian thermal coal production, but still posted a loss for its 2020 financial year that runs to 30 December. Whitehaven, which sells mostly high grade thermal coal to buyers outside of China, scraped an EBIT of A$78.3mn ($60.8mn) for its financial year to 30 June 2020 but returned to a loss of A$94.5mn in July-December, the first half of its 2021 financial year.

Shipments from the four largest iron ore producers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia (WA) were average in the week to 27 February, as a strong performance by Rio Tinto offset the impact of maintenance at Roy Hill.

The four WA producers — Rio Tinto, BHP, Fortescue Metals and Roy Hill — loaded vessels with 17.17mn deadweight tonnes (dwt) of capacity in the latest week. This was up from 16.36mn dwt in the week ending 20 February and slightly below the average of 17.36mn dwt/week over the past year.

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• [Editor:kangmingfei]