Prices

Weekly Indices

The SCRs are produced using our Top & Tailed Mid of Mids methodology from a weekly industry survey open to all market participants. There is no membership fee, no subscription fee and no requirement to belong to a private pricing club. Every credible market participant has a voice.

Before publication, the interim SCR prices are circulated through our Confirm or Challenge process. A broad and balanced panel of producers, traders and consumers is invited either to confirm the interim prices or to challenge them with evidence. Each week, SCR publishes the number of direct price inputs received, the number of confirmations and the number of challenges. That makes SCR the most scrutinised non-black-box coal price discovery process in the market.

SCR is not based on unverifiable “supposed trades”, a journalist’s estimate, a private-club number, invented EFPs or an unregulated trading screen controlled by coal producers, where minimal volumes can influence the published price and transactions may subsequently be reversed away from public view.

Although the Sceats Coal Report newsletter and its FOB Indonesia benchmarks were launched in summer 2024, the wider Sceats group has benchmarked international coal markets for private clients since January 2017, including ARA, Colombia, Richards Bay and Newcastle.

Our weekly survey, published through our Founder’s LinkedIn channel, converts market sentiment for the coming week into a clear Bull, Neutral or Bear indication. Subscription-funded publications are inevitably influenced by subscriber relationships, conference revenues and the need to avoid upsetting important commercial interests. SCR tells readers where the market stood at the weekly close and where market participants collectively believe it is heading next.

SCR coal price data is not contaminated by producer-controlled GlobalCoal inputs, closed pricing clubs in which a small core determines the value used by a much larger market, or publications whose benchmarking operations support subscription and conference businesses. SCR is funded by advertising and data sales. We do not seek commercial relationships with coal producers, traders or consumers that could compromise, or appear to compromise, our independence.

We have nothing to hide. That is why we publish the range of direct price inputs, the number of contributors, the number of confirmations and the number of challenges every week. It is also why the use of SCR data in litigation is expressly permitted, why SCR price discovery has become the largest openly evidenced process in the Indonesian market, and why SCR benchmarks are used to price OTC coal derivatives.