OCEANIA

Newcastle rationing about turn approved

19 years ago

Australia’ s competition watchdog, the ACCC, has given draft approval for capacity rationing to return to the port of Newcastle. The approval authorises rationing until the end of this year, and assumes that under the amended system,the total volume of coal exports is unlikely to be reduced.

The ACCC considers the amendments should help smooth cyclical fluctuations in the ship queue (which reached 70 during March) and provide increased flexibility to producers to maximise their use of coal loading allocations.

The approval allowed Newcastle, the world’s largest coal export terminal, to announce slashed allocations for all producers for 2007 in comparison to what they originally requested.

Last month, major Australian coal exporter Rio Tinto blamed 250 job losses in the Hunter Valley on congested ports and rail bottlenecks.

Meanwhile, following the New South Wales Government elections,Newcastle has received a boost with conditional approval for the port’s third coal facility and an expansion to the existing Kooragang terminal. This could see the port handling up to 211m tonnes of coal each year.