Australia’s Newcastle port, the world’s biggest coal-export harbor, increased shipments of the fuel by 6.8 percent in the first quarter, boosted by a rise in March loadings from the previous month.

Shipments at the port’s two coal terminals rose to 22.26 million metric tons in the three months ended March 31, from 20.84 million a year earlier, Port Waratah Coal Services Ltd. said in a report on its web site. That’s an annualized rate of 89.5 million tons, less than the planned 95 million tons.

Xstrata Plc., Rio Tinto Group and other miners that ship coal through Newcastle are seeking to lift exports to meet rising energy demand in Asia. As of early March about 1 million tons of volume had been lost due to underperformance of the rail and port system, causing loading quotas for miners to be cut this quarter, Port Waratah said on March 3. Graham Davidson, general manager of Port Waratah, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Loadings in March reached an annualized rate of 91.5 million tons, almost the planned 91.6 million tons rate.

Queue of Ships

The average number of vessels waiting outside the port to load coal was 33 in the first quarter, down from 59 a year earlier. Ships had to wait an average of 13.1 days to load coal, down from 22.4 days.

The bottlenecks at the port helped boost prices for power- station coal to a record in February. The globalCOAL NEWC index for thermal coal delivered from Newcastle reached $139.16 a ton in the week ended Feb. 15. The index was $119.50 last week.

The number of ships waiting off the port should decline to 30 by the end of the month, from 41 at the end of March, and then to 18 by the end of May, Hunter Valley Coal Chain Logistics Team, coordinator of coal transportation through the rail and port system, said on its Web site.

Japan received 64 percent of first-quarter shipments from Newcastle, while South Korea got 15 percent, Taiwan 13 percent and China 1.45 percent, Port Waratah said. Eighty-two percent of exports comprised coal burned in power stations, while the rest was the grade used by steelmakers, it said.

Last year, shipments at the New South Wales port were 84.8 million tons, 6.3 percent below target. (Bloomberg)

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Australia’s Newcastle port, the world’s biggest coal-export harbor, increased shipments of the fuel by 6.8 percent in the first quarter, boosted by a rise in March loadings from the previous month.