Coking Coals & Coke Making: Challenges & Opportunities

摘要

The year 2008 has been the most tumultuous year for the Steel Industry as also for the global financial world. Global economy as a whole is facing one of the most difficult crisis ever faced. As for the steel industry, we saw unprecedented highs in the first half of the year and a rapid fall to death spiral levels by September'08. While such cycles are typical to steel, it is the speed of the fall that has caught us unawares. However, with the coordinated efforts by the government across the world, we have reasons to be optimistic and hopefully we will see a revival very soon. In this backdrop, a conference on coking coals and coke could not have been more timely. With the steel prices having fallen to lower than marginal cost levels for most producers, the cost of raw materials is in more focus than ever as far as India is concerned, the cost we are most concerned about is Coking Coal/Coke. But let us analyse this cost more carefully. Is the 300 dollars or so that the world has been paying this year for each tonne of coking coal the only cost or is it more that we are paying? The truth is, that the cost that we are paying for using coking coal/coke in steel making is much much more and we cannot actually put a dollar value for it. It is the cost that the future generations will pay for the pollutions that are causing today in coke making.