coke

With the booming of China's coke industry, China will witness surplus coke yield and the industry is expected to experience large-scale integration in a few years China has a built mechanized coke capacity of 250 million tons. With the throughput in construction of 80 million tons, China will boast an annual coke capacity of 330 million tons, 136 million tons more than the domestic consumption in 2004 of 194 million tons. Though China's coke yield capacity is expected to increase to over five million tons, Europe's dependence on coke imports from China is reducing. Surplus coke supply has emerged in China's market. In 2005, the total coke demand is expected to be 220 million tons, while the current coke output capacity is about 260 million tons with a surplus rate of 18 percent. As 110 million tons are produced by coke plants affiliated to integrated steel mills and have no problem of surplus, the other 150 million tons capacity of independent coke enterprise will have only 110 million tons of demand, thus raising the surplus rate to 36 percent. Together with the ever-increasing coke production cost resulted from a rapid increase of coking coal price, China's coke industry is expecting a declining profits. As a result, many small and medium-sized coke enterprises with backward facilities are facing more fierce challenges to their survival.