The article presents current state of the structure of hard coal enrichment plants in Poland, taking the capacity, the range of grain enrichment and the type of equipment used into account. This data were presented in a tabular format for each Polish Coal Company operating on the Polish market. The article was also present simplified: flow sheet of the steam and coking coal enrichment system. Based on the presented data, the planned needs and trends were described in terms of increasing production efficiency, minimizing water consumption and safety of work. A list of research and development works which must be undertaken were also presented as well as factors determining the technological development of the processing plants.

Over the past two years, coking coal prices have been the most volatile among major bulk commodities. On the supply side, the most important factor determining the movement of coal prices were weather problems affecting the exports of coal from Australia (Queensland), where the production of the best quality coking coals is concentrated. On the demand side, an important factor is the growing role of China on the market, which, being the world’s largest producer and consumer of metallurgical coal, has also become its largest importer. The dominant, about 75% share of China in the global spot market has resulted in their level of activity influencing the periodic price decreases or increases in international trade and prices based on CFR China (along with Australian FOB prices) have become important indicators to monitor market trends and determine levels of negotiated benchmarks. The exceptional volatility on the market led to a change in the quarterly price fixing mechanism for hard-load hard coal contractors in mid–2017 to apply a formula that assumes the valuation of their quarterly volumes based on the average of the basket of spot price indices. This reflects the broader trend of the evolving market, with growing spot market activity. The article describes the current situation on the international coking coal market and presents short-term forecasts for hard coking hard coal prices (PHCC LV), which are a reference point for fixing prices of other types of metallurgical coal (hard standard, semi-soft, PCI).

Over the past decade, the growing demand for imported coal from consumers (mainly Asian) coincided with supply constraints on the part of major suppliers. The sequence of events is referred to as force majeure. There were many events in the exporting countries, mainly including the cyclone and floods in Australia (Queensland, the world’s largest hard coking coal mining region). Imbalance between supply and demand causes commodity prices to be subject to cyclical changes, but in recent years the frequency and dynamics of these changes in the international metallurgical market (hard coking coal, semi-soft coking coal, PCI coal) has been extremely high. China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of coking coal, played a leading role in these events. Political action by the Chinese authorities regarding their domestic mining and metallurgical industries and the coke-chemical industry has made the country dethrone Japan since 2013 and has become a global leader in metallurgical coal imports. The rise of China’s importance in coal trading has become an important benchmark for monitoring market trends and benchmarking benchmarks. The market has become more bipolar and CFR China’s prices (in addition to Australia’s FOB prices). The paper describes the path of pricing mechanism changes in international trade contracts for metallurgical coal, against the background of market conditions that generate these changes.

Ensuring access to a stable supply of a number of raw materials has become a serious challenge for domestic and regional economies with limited production, the EU economy alike. Reliable and unconstrained access to certain raw materials is an ever more serious concern. In order to tackle this challenge, the European Commission has established a list of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) for the EU, which is regularly reviewed and updated. In its Communication COM(217) 490 final of September 13, 2017, the European Commission presented an updated list of 27 critical raw materials for the EU as a result of a third assessment based on a refined methodology developed by the Commission. Economic Importance (EI) and Supply Risk (SR) have remained the two main parameters to determine the criticality of a given raw material. The list of critical raw materials for the EU includes raw materials that reach or exceed the thresholds for both parameters set by the European Commission. The only exception is coking coal (included in the list of critical raw materials for the first time in 2014) which, although not reaching the economic importance threshold, has been conditionally kept on the 2017 list for the sake of caution. Should it not fully meet this criterion, it will be withdrawn from the list during the next assessment.

The article discusses the most important changes to the methodology used in the third review and their impacts on the coking coal criticality assessment. It presents the geographical structure of coking coal global production and consumption as well as the degree to which the EU is reliant on coking coal imports. Raw materials, even if not classified as critical raw materials, are essential for the European economy as they are at the beginning of manufacturing value chains. Their availability may change rapidly due to developments in trade flows or trade policy, which reveals the general need for the diversification of supply.

The paper presents the correlation between the CRI (Coke Reactivity Index), CSR (Coke Strength after Reaction) and the remaining 36 quality parameters of coking coal from the Pniówek deposit (SW part of the USCB). The test results were obtained for a region of fundamental importance to the Polish reserves of coking coal, characterized by highly variable coalification and quality parameters. The tests related to the determination of relationships of the CRI and CSR indices to other parameters were based on 25 channel samples acquired from active workings. The characteristics of the variability of the CRI and CSR indices were analyzed using statistical methods. The dependencies between the CRI and CSR indices and the parameters having an impact on their values were determined using linear correlation. An attempt was also made to determine the correlations between the concerned parameters using the multiple correlation method. The obtained results have been presented and compared to the results of globally conducted experiments in the form of charts presented by (North et al. 2018b). No clear dependence of the CRI and CSR indices was exhibited in case of most of the analyzed quality parameters, which is supported by low correlation coefficients of r < 0.5. The statistical analysis exhibited only 9 cases of correlation between CRI and CSR with other quality parameters, where the correlation coefficient was r ≥ 0.5, that is: Ht a, Na2O, Al2O3 and SiO2, Mn3O4, da a and dr a. This confirms the different characteristics of coal from the studied area, exhibited multiple times, that should be related to the specific coalification process, especially the occurrence of thermal metamorphism.