In the 15 trading days since the system went live on Reuters. At times well over 4Mt of coal was being bid for on the screen, he said.
Global Coal joins several other internet-based trading systems, launched recently. Itochu, Nissho Iwai and Marubeni, established e-market CoalinQ Corp in January. Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo last week established a joint online coal trading company, CoalonNet Inc. Brisbane-based oz-coal.com has been trading since June last year, and recently extended its offerings under the portal Asia.
Global Coal is owned by miners Rio Tinto, Anglo American, Billiton and utilities TXU Europe, Enel, E.ON Energie and Japan's Electric Power Development Corp. Glencore and internet firm Accel-KKR also backed the venture.