Over the last decade Matt Thomas, Founder and CEO of Pacific Energy Brokers, has served as consultant sourcing physical commodities ranging from coal (thermal & metallurgical), iron ore, timber products, natural gas and middle distillates for a variety of industrials and trading companies from India, China, Russia and Indonesia. He has a track record for securing transactions between public and private companies, ranging from miners, to traders, utilities and industrial end-users. His energy, professionalism and capability have seen many companies come to rely on Matt and his team as a key component of their internal coal marketing, trading or procurement teams. Highly passionate about Australia’s coal industry, he has travelled extensively and takes pride in the rich personal and professional relationships he has developed.

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In 2011, Matt established a successful physical coal brokerage desk for a multi-national financial and commodities brokerage firm to better serve the global OTC coal market. The team became a standard bearer for physical coal brokerage with high-level capability, global coverage, extensive customer base and informative market report (“Daily CV Report”). This team was instrumental in standardising the market for 5500NAR thermal coal exported from Australia (API5), South Africa (API3) and Russia into China (API8). Commoditisation of this market met Chinese procurement requirements at the time as well as addressed coal-trader needs for improved product certainty on high-ash coal blend components to satisfy demand in South Korea and Chinese-Taipei.

 

Physical thermal coal trade flows and coal quality parameters have fundamentally changed in the ‘off-spec’ market for thermal coal in recent years, particularly since early 2020. Following industry consultation, Pacific Energy Brokers has launched COALSPEC to provide participants with greater product certainty and address some of these changing market dynamics.