OREANDA-NEWS. July 16, 2009. OAO Raspadskaya, one of Russia’s leading coking coal producers, has announced today its preliminary operating results for 2Q 2009 and 1H 2009:

In 2Q 2009, the sales volume of coal concentrate was 1,685 kt, up 30% as compared to 1Q 2009 and reached 80% of the pre-crisis volumes.

In the frames of the long-term relationships the Company works with all its Russian consumers under contracts, which set quarter prices and sales volumes and so it can adjust prices when the situation in the industry improves.

The Company has partially made a move towards export markets: has started to carry out contracts with large metallurgical companies JFE Holding (Japan) and POSCO (Republic of Korea); has started to sign contracts for the Chinese market via international trade companies. At present, the exports are ca. 40% of the total sales volume.

Gennady Kozovoy, Raspadskaya’s CEO, commented:
“During the difficult period of the downturn in the Russian metallurgical industry, Raspadskaya has worked some challenging objectives on exports out and managed to arrange shipments from several port terminals. We regard our existing export relationships as a basis for signing of more sizable contracts for 2010 and subsequent years.
For 2H 2009, the Company targets the following objectives on sales:
– to increase domestic sales volumes as a result of stable relationships with customers and already received orders for extra shipments of coal concentrate;
– to organize all the logistical chains for shipments to Asia;
– for the total sales volume of 2009, to come near to those of 2008.”