The month of March saw a jump in the amount of coal being shipped out of one of Australia's largest coal terminals.
But Babcock and Brown Infrastructure says the increase is not necessarily a sign that the industry is bouncing back.
Spokesman Greg Smith says in the past month 3.4 million tonnes of coal was loaded onto ships at Dalrymple Bay, south of Mackay in north Queensland.
That is up almost a million tonnes from previous monthly totals.
"I think this is a demand spike because we're not seeing the same number of vessels allocated or proposed for April - so there is a bit of a drop off in April," Mr Smith said.
"So this would seem to be more of a pattern of a demand spike every eight weeks or so based on replenishment of steel mill inventories."
In addition, Mr Smith says says extreme weather affected the amount of coal being loaded at Dalrymple Bay.
He says the figure would have been much higher if Cyclone Hamish had not hit last month.
"All of the ships at the anchorage sailed to more peaceful waters and although the effects of the cyclone were quite minimal in terms of weather, it did take a few days for the ships to sail away and then return," he said.
"So there were limited opportunities within those days to be able to load ships."
Source: ABC
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