High inventory, low demand coal price is still in the decline channel

As of April 7, 71.96 million tons of coal had been stored in the national key power plants, a decrease of 3.96 million tons compared with the beginning of March; 3.46 million tons of coal had been supplied per day, an increase of 470000 tons compared with the previous period; 3.5 million tons of coal had been consumed per day, an increase of 30000 tons compared with the previous period, and the available days were 21 days. As of today, the coal inventory of six coastal power plants is 15.98 million tons, a decrease of 480000 tons compared with the beginning of April; the daily consumption is 53.6 tons, and the available days are 29 days. Due to the coal consumption slack season, the market is pessimistic, and the enthusiasm of power plant procurement and transportation in coastal areas is very low; in addition, the foreign trade processing enterprises and the third industry are slow to resume production, and the power load has not increased significantly.

At present, most of the power plants continue to adopt the strategy of destocking, which leads to a small decrease in the inventory of power plants due to the decrease of power plant input and consumption increase; however, due to the limited decrease, it is not helpful for the market to turn better, and it is unable to stimulate the downstream demand. With high inventory and low daily consumption, the number of days available for coal storage is still high, and the coal price is still in the decline channel; up to now, the actual trading price of coal in the port market has dropped to 490 CNY/ton, down 86 CNY/ton in total. At present, there is no sign of stabilizing and stopping the decline. At present, the heating period in the northeast, North China and other areas is over, and the temperature in the south is generally warmer, so the coal consumption of power plants will be seasonally reduced; and some power plants have begun maintenance, and the coal consumption of coastal power plants continues to rise.

At present, after the daily consumption of six coastal power plants has increased to about 550000 tons, a small fluctuation trend begins to appear; in addition, the port market coal price continues to decline after falling below 500 CNY/ton, and the coal shippers have taken the preferential policies of quantity and price, and continue to trade in accordance with the index, which makes the coal price drop continuously, and the market pessimism further rises. In the face of high inventory and falling coal prices, most of the downstream power plants delay shipment time, waiting for further decline, and purchasing enthusiasm is low. The market of mine mouth power coal keeps loose trend, and the price of mine mouth continues to decline.

The coal mines that have not formally resumed production due to various reasons in the early stage will gradually pass the resumption acceptance in April; however, considering the weak demand for coal, the high inventory of users, the resistance of large-scale production and sales of coal mines, the coal production quantity will be lower than expected. In addition, due to poor sales and inventory accumulation, many coal mines in the "three West" area have properly controlled their production and reduced the number of shipments in the direction of the port; and the daily traffic volume of the Daqin line and Tanghu line has slightly decreased, which is conducive to easing the current situation of oversupply in the market. On the port side, with the low demand for coal and the sharp decrease in the number of coal ships arriving at the port, large coal enterprises competed to bargain and seize market share. It is predicted that in the short term, the demand for coal will not be significantly boosted, and the daily consumption of power plants will be difficult to achieve; downstream users will still mainly focus on destocking, and the subsequent focus will be on the destocking of power plants and the recovery of coal demand.