Kolkata, Dec 22 (IANS) Metallurgy coke producer, Gujarat NRE Coke expects coking coal prices to go up from January following indications that there will be upward revision of steel prices, a senior company official said here Tuesday.
“From September there has been sideways movement. No upward trend. But there is a pressure on the prices to move up. Supply has been lower, demand has been sluggish too,” the company’s chairman-cum-managing director Arun Jagatramka said.

“With the expectation that steel market will stabilise in January, coke prices may shoot up because supply has been very low,” he told reporters after presenting the schedule of Global Steel 2010, which will start in Goa in February 2010.

Coking coal is one of the key ingredients for steel making.

In a recent statement, Steel Authority of India Limited chairman S.K.Roongta said international steel prices have gone up, so it is likely that domestic prices will also go up next month.

Jagatramka said that from January to September, coke prices were rising steadily almost every month in the range of Rs.1,000-Rs.1,500 on a monthly basis. “It went up from Rs.9,000 to Rs.15,000-Rs.16,000. Now it is hovering around Rs.16,000.”

Saying that supply has almost dried up, he added: “China, which has been main exporter of coke, exporting around 14 million tonnes of coke annually, is expected to export less than one million tonnes coke this year.”

Talking about his company’s performance in the about-to-end third quarter (October-December) of the current fiscal (2009-10), Jagatramka said he expects reasonable growth in the successive quarter compared to second quarter that ended Sep 30, 2009.

The total income for the quarter ending Sep 30 stood at Rs.383.41 crore, registering a growth of around 24 percent over Rs.310.04 crore achieved during the quarter ended June 30, 2009.

The profit before tax for the current quarter is Rs.27.90 crore as against that of Rs.5.54 crore in the previous quarter. Similarly the company posted a net profit of Rs.20.21 crore, registering a whooping over 450 percent growth over previous quarter’s profit of Rs.3.64 crore.