China's coke production returned to a growth of 0.3% year on year in July, compared to declines in previous months this year, showed the latest data.

China's coke production came in at 39.97 million tonnes in July, inching up 0.3% from the same month a year ago, the first positive growth seen so far this year, showed data from the National Bureau of Statistics on August 14.

The production, however, was still 0.5% lower than the preceding month, due to capacity elimination and production curbs.

Some backward capacity in Jiangsu, a key coke production base of China was scheduled to be retired by the end of June, and a group of coking plants in Shandong were subjected to 30-50% of production curbs last month, in a bid to reduce coal consumption. Production of 4.3-meter coke ovens in Luliang of Shanxi was at about 70% full to rein in pollution.

This has contributed to a 2% drop in coke output to 268.95 million tonnes over the first seven months, although efforts of production ramp-up at most coking plants cushioned the fall compared with 2.5% decline recorded in January-June.

Despite capacity reduction, China's total coke-making capacity is still expected to increase by about 2% compared with a year ago, some insiders pointed out, thanks to release of capacity from newly-built and capacity replacement projects.

Shanxi, the top coke production base in the country, is likely to eliminate 30 million tonnes of old coke capacity in 2020, lower than about expected increase of 44 million tonnes of capacity in the same year.

Benefiting from sufficient supply of coal, China's coke output has been steadily increased since 2015. Coke production stood at 471.26 million tonnes in 2019, compared to 447.78 million tonnes in 2015, with average yearly growth rate of about 1%.

(Writing by Emma Yang  Editing by Jessie Jia)
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