MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian coal and steel producer Mechel raised supplies of its coking coal concentrate to China in the second quarter and started sales to India and Vietnam, it said on Thursday.
China's demand for coal rose in the second quarter as local production fell, Mechel Chief Executive Oleg Korzhov said in a statement on the April-June production results.
"Mechel put this market situation to good use. We increased overall mining by 4 percent and redirected some of our chief product - coking coal concentrate - to China, increasing our sales to this country nearly by half quarter-on-quarter," Korzhov said.
"We also made several coking coal shipments to India and Vietnam, which are new markets for us," he added.
Mechel, controlled by businessman Igor Zyuzin, said its second-quarter coal production rose 4 percent to 5.9 million tonnes compared with the previous quarter, while steel output rose 2 percent to 1.1 million tonnes.
(Reporting by Polina Devitt; Editing by Dmitry Solovyov and Mark Potter)