Sources close to the deals told Dow Jones Newswires the unnamed major Japanese steelmakers will pay $US225 a tonne for the upcoming quarter.

BHP and Wesfarmers settled June quarterly contracts for the commodity at $200/t, with these prices up 55% from the annual benchmark struck last year.

Quarterly contracts started up in the past few months but not all coal producers are settling on a quarterly basis.

Back in March, Patersons Securities coal analyst Andrew Harrington told ILN there was scope for small coal producers to differentiate themselves and continue annual contracts, and suspected they might have to stick with annual pricing as they only had limited volumes.

Gloucester Coal said it had locked in 100% increases for annual semi-hard coking coal contracts in April, but did not reveal the price.

Traditionally, annual coal contracts were settled in accordance with the Japanese financial year, which starts in April.