Germany set to buy more coal from S.Africa

Germany’s plans to phase out nuclear power plants and shut coal mines will increase its dependence on coal from South Africa, the head of a coal trading firm said on Wednesday.

“South Africa has a great potential to expand its exports to Germany and strengthen its market position in that country even further,” Patrick Steifert, managing director at Germany’s Hanseatic Coal & Coke Trading, told the Coaltrans meeting in Johannesburg.
Steifert said South Africa was the main exporter of steam coal to Europe’s biggest economy, followed by Russia, Poland and Indonesia.

But with Poland cutting back its coal exports to Germany, and Russia, and Indonesia increasingly selling coal to resource-hungry China and India, South Africa stood to gain a bigger foothold in Germany, which relies on coal for 21 percent of its electricity output, he said.

Colombia is the other major coal exporter to Germany.

Germany has agreed with its utility companies to shut down all 17 atomic power plants — currently its biggest source of electricity — by the early 2020s.

It is a high-cost producer of coal, but that will cease to be mined there by 2018.

As a result, German coal power plants will increase their demand for coal from abroad from around 30.6 million tonnes a year to 56-66 million tonnes a year by 2020, Steifert said.

Reuters