Australia’s Yancoal says ‘no direct impact’ on its coal shipments at Chinese ports
- Yancoal, Australia’s third largest coal producer, says there have been no handling delays on its coal shipments at Chinese ports
- Yancoal shares surged 32.4 per cent on Tuesday in Hong Kong following its annual results announcement
Yancoal Australia, the nation’s third largest coal producer, said it had not been affected by import restrictions at mainland ports, despite media reports of customs delays as retaliation against Canberra’s ban on using 5G mobile network equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies.
Yancoal, whose shares closed 32.4 per cent higher at HK$23.20 on Tuesday on results that beat analysts’ expectations, would also continue to grow production, according to chief executive Reinhold Schmidt.
The company declared a special dividend of 12.59 Australian cents (70.6 HK cents) per share, on top of a final dividend of 15.96 Australian cents (89.5 HK cents) per share, lifting the full year payout to 60 per cent of its total profit in 2018.
“We have seen no direct impact … we have long term contracts on sales to China and there was no special arrangement [aimed to get around any port delays],” he told reporters on Tuesday. “We have built into our business model to allow us to move coal around to all our customers.”
Only around 20 per cent of the output of Yancoal – a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed state-backed Yanzhou Coal Mining – goes to China, he added.
Japan is its largest export destination, followed by Singapore, China, South Korea and Taiwan.
China has been targeting Australian coal imports by slowing down customs clearance in the past few weeks, extending clearance to over 40 days from the original five to 20 days, Bloomberg reported. In the northern city of Dalian clearance was suspended, the report said.
