Whether the coke price will turn around in the heating season

Since late August, the coke price has entered the downward channel. On August 24 and August 31, the steel plant continuously raised and lowered the price for two rounds, with a cumulative decrease of 200 CNY/ton, which is still weak. On September 16, some coke enterprises tried to raise 100 CNY/ton, which was accepted by the steel plant, and the coke price continued to be stable; on October 8, a few coke enterprises raised 100 CNY/ton again, but still refused to close with the steel plant, and the coke price failed to support, which was weak. On October 18, Shanxi, Hebei and Shandong steel plants successively raised and lowered 50 CNY/ton, and coke enterprises accepted the implementation successively; up to now, coke price has been reduced for three rounds accumulatively by 250 CNY/ton, and the market pessimism has not been changed. Near the heating season, a new round of environmental protection production restriction is coming. Can the coke price be reversed? Here is a detailed explanation. Weak support for loose supply and demand of coke price.

This year's coke enterprises started operation as a whole, which is higher than that of last year. According to the statistics of our network, the daily output of 230 coke independent coke enterprises is 671500 tons, and the production capacity of 230 coke enterprises accounts for 0.87, that is to say, the output of coke enterprises is about 770000 tons / day. There are 54 coking plants in our network, with an average daily output of 326000 tons, and the daily output of coke is 1096000 tons. The average daily output of molten iron of 247 steel plants is 2.198 million tons, and the capacity of steel plants accounts for 0.9% of the total. The demand for converted coke is about 970000 tons / day. The overall social inventory of coke is higher than that of the same period of last year. The current inventory is 9.5561 million tons, an increase of about 2.4762 million tons compared with the same period of last year. The main increase is in the port coke inventory, which is 4.49 million tons, 2.054 million tons compared with the same period of last year. The overall inventory of steel plants is about 200000 tons higher than that of last year. Once again, it reflects the increase of coke supply and loose supply and demand.

There are about 180000 tons of imported coke from January to August 2019, an increase of about 140000 tons over the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of 358.89%. From January to August 2019, about 4.772 million tons of Coke will be exported, a decrease of 1.625 million tons over the same period last year. The coke production capacity of the export object has been successively landed, and the coke export volume has been greatly reduced; the coke import growth rate is obvious, especially the recent increase in the quantity of coke imported from Japan and Japan by Southern steel works. The imported coke with low ash and sulfur content has better index and moderate price, which impacts the domestic coke market. For example, in October, Fujian steel plant imported Japanese coke, and the coke index is grade I coke (high quality, only slightly high phosphorus content), CFR price is 250 US dollars / ton; the trade quotation of grade I coke in domestic port is 1880 CNY/ton, and the factory acceptance quotation is 2050 CNY/ton. The price is due to the domestic market. Since October 2018, the steel price has entered a declining mode. Influenced by the profit transmission of the industrial chain, the coke price has begun to decline. In spite of the subsequent rebound, the rebound range is limited. The maximum rebound range this year is 300 CNY/ton, compared with 650 CNY/ton last year. Compared with last year, coke steel industry shows a downward trend of shock. At present, there is no improvement trend, and the later period is not optimistic.

Coke has fallen by 250 CNY/ton in total. The raw material coking coal is under pressure, and the market coking coal price has declined to varying degrees. Because the coal mines are relatively centralized and collective, the long-term cooperative price in the fourth quarter has not been moved temporarily. In the later period, the economy continued to decline, and coking coal was hard to resist the downward trend. After the reduction of 50 CNY/ton of coke price in this round, the profit per ton of coke of coke enterprises is 80 CNY/ton, and there is little room to continue to go down. Especially in Northeast China, most coke enterprises have started to lose money due to the shortage of coking coal and higher cost than other regions. There is strong conflict with the reduction of 50 CNY/ton. At present, coke enterprises have not fully accepted it and are still under discussion.

Environmental protection policies weaken the impact of new production capacity and speed up the progress of new production capacity. Environmental protection and production restriction: in 2019, environmental protection and production restriction policies are still issued frequently, and the blast furnace production restriction intensity (50%) is higher than last year (mostly for sintering and shaft furnace production restriction), but the implementation of environmental protection and production restriction is low, and the actual impact on production capacity is small, so the market begins to treat it rationally. The impact of environmental protection and production restriction is weakened. In terms of capacity removal, according to the action plan for comprehensive control of air pollution in autumn and winter 2019-2020 in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and surrounding areas, by the end of December 2019, Hebei Province will reduce and withdraw 3 million tons of coke capacity, Shanxi Province will shut down and eliminate 10 million tons of coke capacity, and Shandong Province will reduce 10.31 million tons of coke capacity. Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong accelerated the reduction of 4.3 m coke oven with long furnace life and poor furnace condition. Hebei, Shandong and Henan should increase the reduction of independent coking enterprises in accordance with the target that the ratio of coking capacity to steel capacity reaches about 0.4 by the end of December 2020. According to the document, the coking capacity will be reduced by 23.31 million tons in 2019. According to statistics of our network, 5.81 million tons have been eliminated so far, while 14.15 million tons of new capacity have been added. At present, the annual capacity of coking in the state of oven drying is 5.07 million tons, most of which are expected to be put into production this year.