Sojitz to Expand Coal Trade 18% With Access to Mongolian Mine

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Sojitz Corp. will boost coal trading by about 18 percent after the Japanese trading company won an agreement from Prophecy Resource Corp. to market the fuel to China from a Mongolian mine.



Coal trading will rise to about 20 million metric tons a year in the year starting April 1, 2012, from 17 million tons, Yoshikazu Ichikawa, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based company, said today in a phone interview.

Sojitz agreed to jointly market power station coal from its Canadian partner’s 208 million-ton Ulaan Ovoo coal deposit, according to a June 7 statement.

Sojitz joins Itochu Corp. in seeking coal from Mongolia, which shares a border with China and Russia, as China became a net importer of the fuel in 2009. The global energy coal market will move into a deficit this year, and prices will rise every year from 2010 to 2012, Deutsche Bank AG said in a June report.

“Our purpose is to secure Mongolian coal as a new procurement resource,” Ichikawa said. “We will market the coal mainly to China and are also looking to sell to Japan.”

Sojitz shares gained 1.4 percent to 144 yen at 1:55 p.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange after climbing as much as 2.8 percent.

The Japanese trader will start selling 250,000 tons of Mongolian coal in the year to March 2011, and 3 million tons two years later, Ichikawa said.

Itochu, Japan’s fourth-largest trading company by market value, invested in Winsway Coking Coal Holdings Ltd. in April to secure coal from Mongolia, the company said May 17.

China bought 126 million tons of coal from overseas last year, according to Chinese customs data, as government stimulus spending spurred demand from steelmakers and power stations.

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