Australia's Newcastle Coal Exports Jump 20%; Ship Queue Drops

By Jesse Riseborough

Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Coal exports from Australia's Newcastle, the world's biggest export harbor for the fuel, increased 20 percent last week while the number of ships waiting outside the port fell.

The volume shipped in the week ended 7 a.m. local time yesterday gained to 2.01 million metric tons from 1.67 million tons a week earlier, Newcastle Port Corp. said today on its Web site. A total of 23 ships, waiting to load 2.32 million tons of coal, were lined up outside the port, down from 30 last week.

Coal exporters in Australia, the world's largest shippers of the fuel, are boosting output to take advantage of prices that gained to a record last month. Rio Tinto Group, Xstrata Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. are among mining companies that ship coal through Newcastle.

Coal ships waited 11.3 days to load coal in the week, down from 13.15 days a week earlier, Newcastle Port said. The waiting time compared with 0.33 day for general cargo vessels last week, it said.

A total of 25 vessels carrying coal left Newcastle in the week ended Aug. 2, Newcastle Port said today in an e-mailed report. Seventeen ships were bound for Japan, four for Taiwan, two for Malaysia and one for South Korea and Turkey, it said.

The weekly price index for power-station coal shipped from Newcastle dropped 8.2 percent last week to $160.40 a ton, according to the globalCOAL NEWC index. The monthly index for July increased 13 percent to $184.51.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jesse Riseborough in Melbourne at jriseborough@bloomberg.net