Coking coal is the raw material used to make steel.

Coking coal is converted to coke by driving off impurities to leave almost pure carbon. The physical properties of coking coal cause the coal to soften, liquefy and then resolidify into hard but porous lumps when heated in the absence of air. Coking coal must also have low sulphur and phosphorous contents.
Coking coal, a natural bedfellow to iron ore, and a highly specialised but bulk market, is also running up the price curve.China remains the world's No 1 miner of iron ore and coal, but has become a net importer of both, with coal going into that mode just last year.
The market scenario for Chinese coking coal is similar to iron ore. Vale puts it so: "There is robust demand growth derived from a continued steel production increase. On the supply side, coal fields are moving inland while steel mills are increasingly concentrated in coastal areas and requiring high quality coking coal in the face of a decline in the quality of limited coal reserves. As other countries are running steel mills at increasing rates of utilization, the market for coking coal is expected to become tighter in 2010".