European Commission Includes Coking Coal in Strategic Material List
On September 3, the European Commission has re-entered coking coal on the list of Critical Raw Materials for the EU. This year's revision of the list of strategic raw materials has confirmed the importance of coking coal for the development of the European economy. Coking coal has maintained its place on the list of strategic raw materials for the European Union. Access to coking coal is highly concentrated, as Australia itself is responsible for 24% of its global production, and in the European Union, Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa is its largest producer, satisfying almost 20% of the annual demand of the European steel industry. In the EU countries, coking coal deposits are already exhausted. Therefore, the Community has to import most of its raw material from third countries. EU steel mills use 37 million tons of coke annually, the production of which requires 53 million tons of coking coal (to produce 1 ton of the main semi-product in the steel industry, the so-called pig iron, as much as half a ton of this type of coal is needed). Only 17 million tons come from EU countries, including 11.6 million tons from Poland, and the rest comes from Australia, the USA, Canada and Mozambique. Coking coal, next to iron ore, is the basic raw material for the steel industry. The coal produced by JSW contributes to reducing the EU's dependence on imports of this raw material from third countries.
The list includes the most economically important raw materials for which the supply is at high risk due to the concentration of their world production. The list of strategic raw materials, published every three years, is a tool supporting the development of European Union policy, thanks to which it is easier to identify investment needs. Economic importance and supply risk are the two main parameters used to define the criticality for the EU. The new list of critical raw materials is to be valid for the next three years and includes 30 raw materials, incl. antimony, beryllium, borates, chromium, fluorite, phosphate rock, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, cobalt, metallic silicon, magnesium, magnesite, rare earth metals, niobium, platinum and tungsten. Compared to the previous list, published in 2017, the current list has been expanded to include bauxite, lithium, strontium and titanium, but helium has fallen out of it.
Source : STRATEGIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE