South Korea’s Hyundai Steel said on Wednesday it will buy a maximum of 300,000 tonnes of coal per year from Siberian Anthracite of Russia from 2010 for five years to feed its steel capacity expansion. Both firms have signed a memorandum of agreement for the supply deal in Novosibirsk, Russia, a company spokesman said.

Hyundai Steel builds its first blast furnace to produce 8 million tonnes of steel annually. For this expansion, Hyundai Steel late last year said it would buy coking coal from BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.

JSC «Siberian Anthracite» is the only developer of Gorlovsky basin near Novosibirsk. The company is the second in volume production at anthracite market in Russia. At the moment the confirmed balance reserves of JSC «Siberian Anthracite» represent about 380 million tons of anthracite. Annual production is up to 3 million tons.

S.Korea Hyundai Steel to buy coal from Siberia // Reuters.Com. Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:47am EDT