With the coal terminal lifting capacity from 72 million tonnes per annum to 85Mtpa at the start of this month, DBCT general manager operations Greg Smith told ILN the queue continued to fall from the high 40s to its current level of 39 ships.

“We anticipate it will continue to fall toward 30 over the coming weeks, provided the coal can be delivered to the terminal,” he said.

He confirmed that a lot of deliveries were going to China, saying they represented 35-40% of total throughput, “although we have no forward intelligence to show how sustainable that demand is into the future”

Smith said DBCT did expect metallurgical coal demand to remain strong in the second half of this year.

“That is the indication we are getting from our producers as their traditional markets resurge from the global financial crisis at the same time as this current Chinese interest.”

In its quarterly report this week, Macarthur Coal says it expects an increase in demurrage costs for the September quarter as waiting times at DBCT reach 15-25 days.

Smith said that for June and July, producers had accepted vessel nominations exceeding the terminal capacity, which is greater than the rail capacity.

“This was escalated by the end of the financial year. Accordingly, as the number of ships arriving is greater than the system can deliver, a queue of ships was formed.

“However, with the new terminal capacity, more reliability in the rail system and a return to more stable coal selling practices (selling to system capacity to avoid demurrage exposure), we expect the current queue to continue to fall.”

Macquarie analysts recently noted that China had become the predominant driver of the metallurgical coal market.

Referencing their own data along with that supplied by Global Trade Information Services and Reuters, the analysts said China imported 5.2Mt of coking coal in June, a 798% increase year-on-year, while thermal coal imports had increased 393% year-on-year to 10.8Mt.

Macquarie said China took 35% of Australia’s total metallurgical coal exports in May, compared with 1% of exports through 2008.

The analysts said Australia shipped 4.2Mt of metallurgical coal to China in June compared with 4.1Mt in May.