Metal Bulletin reviews some of the key news and price moves from the past week in the global steel market.

The latest news and price moves to start the Asian day on Wednesday May 9.

Turkey’s steel mills continued their deep-sea purchases for June this week with prices showing a slight decrease, while Taiwanese import and US export prices were holding stable.

Posco has announced that it would pay 241.42 billion Won ($218.58 million) for all the shares of Posco SS-Vina, a 1-million-tpy integrated special long steel plant that is close to commissioning in Vietnam.

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

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

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.

Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange are for the most part stronger this morning, Monday October 16. Nickel prices are little changed, while the rest are up by an average of 0.9% – led by a 1.9% gain in copper prices to $7,025 per tonne.

China’s daily crude steel output rose in early September, putting more pressure on the market.

Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange are once again down across the board, with average losses of 0.3% this morning, Friday September 29. Volume has been average with 5,910 lots traded as of 06:42 BST.