Regional: Newcastle Port's 2011 coal exports up

Coal exports through the Port of Newcastle reached 114 million tonnes in 2011, the company?s CEO said, Australian media reported on Friday.

Gary Webb said that there were record figures for December while the total coal export figure for 2011 was just over 114 million tonnes - up 11 per cent on the previous year.

The trade is worth nearly $13 billion. There were several extended maintenance outages on the coal chain network in 2011, but Webb says they had no impact.

Newcastle Port Corporation says there is no doubt coal export records will continue to be broken, as new infrastructure comes on line. "And certainly we will continue to see export records continued to be met calendar year and financial year for the next few years." (*)