Seatrade Maritime is part of the Informa Markets Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Accord Projects to start Indonesia-India coal shipping project in Oct

Accord Projects to start Indonesia-India coal shipping project in Oct
Small niche elements of the coal business in Indonesia are coming back and proving that there can always be an opportunity if you know where to look, commodities trading projects specialist Accord Projects is set to take advantage of that.

This will be our main business going forward," Accord Projects director Pappu Sastry told Seatrade Maritime News. The former md of Nepa Projects and Investments said he is working with a conglomerate of Indonesian mines to ship coal to India. They had been doing a good business shipping thermal coal to China previously and in 2014-15 were doing volumes of 14m to 15m tons a year.

However the bottom fell out of this market last year and they had stopped production since last October. A new opportunity has now come up with requirements from India, although the demand will be about half, at 6m to 7m tons. The difference however is that Indian coal importers deal on a CIF basis and these producers have no experience in shipping the commodity.

Sastry has been working with them to smoothen import processes and is set to get the first shipments going by October. He expects shipments of 500,000 tons a month once in full flow and will charter four to six panamaxes a month to fulfill these orders.

He added that Accord has also signed a contract for some shipments to Penang in Malaysia but these comprise smaller volumes.