Metal Bulletin reviews the major stories affecting the steel market over the past week.

Base metals traded on the London Metal Exchange are mainly firmer this morning, Wednesday September 27, with gains averaging 0.6%. Volume has been average with 6,713 lots traded as of 06:48 BST.

The sharp declines in the European ferro-vanadium market have paused with prices only moving down slightly last week. Meanwhile, the Chinese ferro-vanadium export market stabilized on firm offers.

Global scrap prices weakened in most markets except Taiwan during the working week from Monday July 9 to Friday July 13, amid sluggish demand in the major regions.

Global billet prices have shown mixed dynamics over the past week, as an uptick in Turkish scrap prices dragged up CIS and Turkish billet prices, while Southeast Asian and UAE billet prices were down due to poor sentiment.

Metal Bulletin reviews the major stories affecting the steel market this week.

China’s major mills lowered their crude steel output rates further in late October even as finished steel inventories continued to decrease.

The latest news and price moves to start the Asian day on Wednesday May 2.

Canada has established surtax-free quotas for imports of energy tubular products and wire rods originating in Mexico, effective from February 2, according to an official from Canada’s Ministry of Finance.

The fruits of Marius Kloppers’ crusade for shorter-term prices for iron ore were clear in BHP Billiton’s first-half results published last week. The group’s underlying profits were up 59.7% year-on-year at $17.3 billion for the second half of 2010, but iron ore ebit was up 178%. Iron ore’s share of earnings rose from below one quarter to nearly 40% of earnings, as BHP shifted nearly all sales to more lucrative index-linked or spot prices.