At Kpler, we are committed to providing our users with the most accurate and detailed data to empower your market analysis and decision-making processes.
As part of this commitment, we are excited to introduce a significant update to our Coal commodity tree, specifically focused on increasing the granularity of US metallurgical coal classifications.
What's New?
Effective June 6th, 2025, we have enhanced our trades dataset by introducing brand-level data for US metallurgical coal. These updates are made possible through our access to bills of lading, covering more than 50% of US metallurgical coal exports.
The new classifications include:
Coal brand information
Volatility breakdown for hard coking coal, categorized into:
Low volatile
Medium volatile
High volatile
These enhancements provide a more granular view of US coal exports and will also be applied retroactively to include data going back to 2018.
Understanding the Classifications
Coal Brand:
Identifies the specific brand of metallurgical coal, offering greater clarity in trade analysis and benchmarking.
Volatility classes:
Volatility refers to the volatile matter content in hard coking coal—a key quality metric that impacts coke strength, blend behavior, and pricing across the steel value chain.
Detailed Breakdown of the New Categories
The updated Coal commodity tree now enables:
Classification of US metallurgical coal by brand.
Differentiation of Hard Coking Coal by volatility level.
Improved traceability and data consistency across both historical and real-time trades.
Before:
After (Australian brands in orange, US in red):
Effective Date
Please note that these enhancements will be effective starting June 6th, 2025, and will also apply to data as far back as 2018.
We encourage all users to explore the updated commodity tree and incorporate these new levels of granularity into their workflows for improved analysis and reporting.
How Can This Update Benefit You?
The updated coal classifications offer:
Enhanced Granularity: Understand brand-level movements and volatility preferences in global met coal trade.
Improved Queries: Easily filter and segment coal types for benchmarking, sourcing, or demand tracking.
Precise Insights: Analyze regional differences in demand for low vs. high volatile coal grades.
Market Intelligence Support: Refine your assessments of coal quality, pricing trends, and steelmaking inputs.
These new data points allow for sharper segmentation and more precise modeling—whether you’re tracking market share by brand, adjusting cost curves, or comparing export flows across volatility grades.
Support and Questions
We understand that updates can bring questions. If you need more information or assistance in navigating the updated coal classifications, please don’t hesitate to contact us at dry@kpler.com.
Our team is here to ensure you have the insights and support needed to make the most of these enhancements.