In 2002, the lot of your average Pacific thermal coal marketing manager has not been an easy one. But now, it has started to look a little rosier for coal producers in the Pacific basin, following September's price rallies in Europe.
Most marketing people have spent probably half of their time this year travelling back up to Japan, Korea and Taiwan to continue one of the most fractious and prolonged series of price negotiations in memory. Talks began about this time last year between Australian and Japanese negotiators following on from the traditional Australia-Japan conference. At that time the producers were fairly confident of managing to limit the fall out from September 11 to a rollover settlement or at worst a small price reduction....
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Approx 2000 words from CoalTrans International, September/October 2002,
page 42.
