The “2019 China Coal and Coke Industry Conference (CCIC)” is held in Shenzhen on August 22. It is jointly organized by Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE), the China National Coal Association and the China Coking Industry Association and co-organized by Steelhome.cn. DCE CEO Wang Fenghai says in the speech that DCE will continue to improve the market operation quality, accelerate the listing of new products related to coal and coke, strengthen the over-the-counter market building, keep enhancing DCE futures’ price influence and its capacity of serving the real economy, and serve the supply-side structural reform of the coal and coke industry.
Wang Fenghai says that there have been increasing uncertain and unstable factors affecting the coking coal and metallurgical coke prices in recent years, leading to the great fluctuations in the spot prices of coking coal and metallurgical coke. The huge challenge faces the steady operation of enterprises and the demand of managing risks through the futures market keeps increasing. The coal, coke and steel industry is one of the main focuses of DCE serving the real economy. DCE has enriched the product system, improved the market functions, and played a positive role in serving the development of relevant industries. It has successively listed the metallurgical coke, coking coal and iron ore futures, gradually formed a relatively complete risk-avoiding chain of iron-making raw materials, and ushered in overseas investors for iron ore futures, which have increased the influence of DCE’s coal and coke ore prices in domestic and international markets.
For years, the coking coal and metallurgical coke futures markets present sufficient liquidity and increasingly improved participant structure. From January to July of this year, the trading volume of the coking coal and metallurgical coke futures reached 49.27 million contracts, the trading turnover totaled RMB 8.3 trillion, and the average daily open interest amounted to 310,000 contracts, and there were 6,400 corporate clients, whose open interest accounted for 37%, a year-on-year increase of 2%. In the global energy futures trading volume ranking in the first half year, DCE’s metallurgical coke and coking coal ranks the 9th and 10th respectively. In recent years, the correlation between the futures and spot prices of coking coal, metallurgical coke and iron ore has grown steadily, and the basis pricing mode based on DCE prices has been gradually applied in the spot trading of iron, steel and coal. More and more enterprises have made use of the futures market to manage price fluctuation risks and the futures functions have been fully played.
Wang points out that serving the real economy and the national strategy is the original mission of the futures market. In recent years, DCE has initially formed a diversified and open development pattern with both futures&options and swaps, both exchange-traded business and over-the-counter service, and both domestic clients and overseas clients. While serving the coal, coke and steel industry, DCE has paid equal attention to regulation and service, strengthened the efforts on innovation on the basis of preventing market risks, and continued to increase the level of serving the real economy and the supply-side structural reform.
The conference, with the theme of “Gathering Strength for Integrated Development”, focuses on the development, reform and the risk management of the coal and coke industry and aims at propelling the futures market to earnestly serve the real economy and facilitating the integrated development of industry and capital. Representatives from relevant government departments, industry associations, iron & steel and coal & coke producing enterprises, financial investment and research institutions and information institutions have engaged in the discussion on the macro economic and financial situation, the development of the coal and coke industry, the supply-demand situation and price trend in the market, the futures instrument application strategy and the new industry-finance integration mode.
