Seaborne coal moves in a small number of well-worn lanes. Most of the tonnage is steam coal burned for power, the rest is the higher-grade coal that goes into steelmaking, and the two trades follow different geographies. This page maps the principal flows and the ships that serve them.
What are the major coal trade flows?
The major seaborne coal flows are a short list dominated by a handful of exporters and two import-hungry basins. In broad terms the principal lanes are:
- Indonesia to China and India. The dominant intra-Pacific thermal lane by volume, feeding South and East Asian power generation.
- Australia to North Asia. Both thermal and metallurgical coal moving to China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
- Russia to Asia. Pacific-facing exports out of Far East and, increasingly, redirected eastward tonnage.
- Colombia and the United States to Europe. The classic Atlantic thermal and met lane into the EU and Mediterranean.
- South Africa to India. Thermal coal from Richards Bay swinging east into the Indian Ocean.
Indonesia and Australia are the two export anchors that set the tone for the whole trade. Indonesia is the largest steam-coal exporter and Australia is the largest metallurgical-coal exporter, a structural pairing reported consistently by the IEA in its annual coal market reviews and by UNCTAD in the Review of Maritime Transport.
The rest of this page splits those lanes the way the market itself does: first by what the coal is for (thermal versus metallurgical), then by geography (Pacific versus Atlantic basin), and finally by the bulk carrier classes that actually carry it.
Thermal versus metallurgical coal
The single most useful division in coal trade is the split between thermal and metallurgical grades, because the two are different products with different buyers, different quality specifications, and largely different trade routes.
Thermal coal (also called steam coal) is burned to raise steam, mostly in power stations and in cement and industrial heat. It is bought on calorific value, sulphur and ash, and it is the larger of the two trades by a wide margin. Thermal demand is concentrated in Asian power markets, which is why the Pacific basin carries most of the world’s coal tonne-miles. Our cargo profile for coal in dry bulk shipping covers the handling and stowage side of the commodity.
Metallurgical coal (coking coal, or met coal) is heated in coke ovens to make the coke that feeds blast-furnace steelmaking. It is a smaller, higher-value trade graded on coking properties such as fluidity and coke strength, and it is far more geographically concentrated on the export side. A related by-product, petroleum coke (pet-coke), moves on some of the same lanes as a cheaper fuel and anode feedstock, though it is a distinct commodity.
The grouping matters for shipping because the two trades behave differently. Thermal coal is high-volume, price-sensitive, and routed toward the cheapest delivered energy. Metallurgical coal tracks steel production, ties to a narrower set of suppliers, and shares its demand drivers with iron ore, the other half of the blast-furnace recipe. When you see commentary on “coal” tonnage you are almost always looking at thermal volumes; the met trade is the smaller, steel-linked tail.
The Pacific basin lanes
The Pacific basin is where most seaborne coal moves, because the largest importers (China, India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) and two of the three largest exporters (Indonesia and Australia) all sit around it. The principal Pacific lanes are:
- Indonesia to China. Short-haul thermal coal, much of it sub-bituminous, into southern and eastern Chinese ports.
- Indonesia to India. Thermal coal into India’s western and eastern coasts, competing with domestic supply.
- Australia to North Asia. Thermal and metallurgical coal to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China; the met component supports North Asian steel.
- Russia (Far East) to China, Japan and Korea. Thermal and met coal out of Pacific-facing terminals.
- South Africa to India and Southeast Asia. Richards Bay thermal coal that historically faced the Atlantic but has swung east toward Asian demand.
Two features define the Pacific trade. First, the haul lengths are mostly short to medium: the Indonesia-to-North-Asia and Indonesia-to-India runs are far shorter than any Atlantic crossing, which is part of why the basin generates so much tonnage relative to its tonne-miles. Second, the trade is heavily thermal, so it is sensitive to power demand, hydro availability, gas prices and domestic-coal policy in the importing countries. For the broader market context around these lanes, see our transpacific routes and markets overview.
The Atlantic basin lanes
The Atlantic basin is the smaller of the two coal theatres, but it is the home of the classic long-haul thermal and metallurgical lanes into Europe. The principal Atlantic lanes are:
- Colombia to Europe. Thermal coal from Caribbean ports into Northwest Europe and the Mediterranean, the benchmark Atlantic steam-coal flow.
- United States to Europe. Both thermal and metallurgical coal, with the East-Coast met trade feeding European steel mills.
- United States to the Mediterranean and onward to Asia. Higher-cost swing tonnage that appears when prices justify the longer haul.
- Russia (Baltic and Black Sea) to Europe and the Mediterranean. Atlantic-facing exports, historically a major European supply source.
- Colombia and US to Asia (arbitrage). Atlantic origins reaching Pacific buyers when the price spread covers the extra distance.
The Atlantic trade is shaped by two things the Pacific is not. The first is arbitrage: because Atlantic origins are far from the biggest demand center in Asia, tonnage only flows east when the delivered-price spread is wide enough, so the basin acts as a swing supplier. The second is the European demand backdrop, where coal competes directly with gas and is exposed to power-sector and policy shifts. The long Atlantic-to-Asia hauls are exactly the kind of voyages that lift tonne-mile demand out of proportion to their tonnage. See our transatlantic routes and markets page for more on this basin, and the major ports overview for the load and discharge terminals involved.
How the lanes map to vessel classes
Coal is carried across the full spread of dry-bulk tonnage, and the lane usually decides the class. The mapping runs roughly as follows:
- Capesize. The long-haul, deep-draught workhorse for the biggest coal cargoes, typically the Atlantic-to-Asia thermal runs and the high-volume Australia-to-China and Australia-to-Japan flows out of deep terminals. See Capesize bulk carriers.
- Panamax. The default coal class for a very large share of the trade, sized to the major coal-loading terminals and discharge ports; the Indonesia-to-India and many Atlantic thermal lanes are Panamax-led. See Panamax bulk carriers.
- Supramax. Mid-size geared tonnage for shorter or draught-restricted runs, including parcels into smaller Asian discharge ports and Indonesian shipments off transshipment or river loaders. See Supramax bulk carriers.
- Handysize. The smallest segment, picking up coal into shallow ports and on regional distribution legs where larger ships cannot berth. See Handysize bulk carriers.
Two annotations make the mapping concrete. First, the choice is driven by parcel size and port draught, not by the grade of coal: a met-coal cargo and a thermal cargo of the same tonnage to the same berth take the same class. Second, the short-haul Pacific lanes lean smaller and the long-haul Atlantic arbitrage leans Capesize, which is why a basin can be large in tonnes yet modest in tonne-miles, or the reverse.
A worked illustration of the lane-to-class logic on the dominant short-haul Pacific thermal flow:
| Lane | Typical class | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Indonesia to South China | Panamax / Supramax | Short haul, abundant cargoes, terminal and discharge-port draught favour mid-size tonnage over Capesize |
| Australia to Japan/Korea | Panamax / Capesize | Larger parcels, deep load terminals, longer haul justify bigger ships |
| Atlantic origin to Asia | Capesize | Long haul; only the largest, lowest-cost-per-tonne ships make the arbitrage economic |
How any single cargo is actually fixed (and how the cost is split between owner and charterer) is a chartering question rather than a trade-flow one. For the mechanics, see voyage charters, the FIO terms common in the coal trade, and how charter rates are set. The wider dry bulk shipping hub sets coal in context alongside the other major bulks.
Scope and what this page does not cover
This page is a structural map of the seaborne coal trade: the thermal-versus-metallurgical split, the export anchors, the Pacific and Atlantic basins, and the lane-to-vessel mapping. It is meant as a stable reference, not a market report.
It deliberately does not cover live freight rates, current coal prices, dated import or export volumes, or commentary on any particular year’s market. Those numbers move constantly and belong in the rate and market pages, not in an evergreen explainer. Where this page names a structural fact that would normally carry a figure (which exporter is largest, how much a basin carries), the figure is left to a cited source or flagged for desk verification rather than asserted. For current rate and market context, follow the routes and markets hub and the chartering pages linked above.