Bloomberg reported that coal shipments from Australia’s Dalrymple Bay terminal in Queensland State rose to the highest in 9 months in April. Exports from Newcastle port in New South Wales dropped 2.7% last week.

North Queensland Bulk Ports said that the volume exported from Dalrymple Bay last month was 6.01 million tonnes, the highest since July. About 80% of the coal exported from the facility is used for steelmaking.

Dalrymple Bay, owned by Prime Infrastructure Group, handles coal from as many as 18 mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin region and customers include Rio Tinto Group and Xstrata Plc. The port completed AUD 1.3 billion expansion in July to boost annual capacity to 85 million tonnes. It exported 47 million tonnes in the year ended June 2009. The volume exported from Newcastle in the week ended 7 AM local time dropped to 2 million tonnes from 2.1 million tonnes in the preceding period.

Newcastle Port Corporation said that 33 vessels, waiting to load 2.87 million tonnes were outside the harbor up from 29 week earlier. Coal ships waited to load for an average of 12.8 days down from 13.61 days a week earlier. That compares with 0.22 day for general cargo vessels.

(Sourced from Bloomberg)