Indian steel market for both long and flat products has surged by more than 8% since March beginning, when steel majors declared their new prices for March deliveries citing additional burden of increased excise duty.

For a variety of reasons, steel buyers have rushed to the market to secure large volumes last week resulting in a mad scramble to take deliveries from steel mills and their warehouses, which are mostly reported to have very small inventories and are facing stock out situation for many sizes and specifications.

The Financial Express reported that Japan’s second largest steel firm, JFE Steel, is close to acquiring around 10% stake in JSW Steel.

As per report "Though the financial details of the deal is still being worked out, going by the closing share price of JSW at INR 1,166 on the BSE on Thursday, a 10% stake, together with a marginal premium, would cost around INR 2,700 crore for JFE."

China Securities Journal reported that a number of major Chinese steelmakers have asked Premier Mr Wen Jiabao to direct the government to tackle iron ore price negotiations.

The paper reported, quoting what it described as authoritative sources, the vice president of the China Iron & Steel Association and the heads of more than 10 mills wrote the joint letter to Mr Wen on March 11th asking him to take up the issue of rising iron ore import prices at a national level.

Corus made a detailed release as under

In recent weeks the partial mothballing of Teesside Cast Products, which was announced in December 2009 and started on February 19th 2010, has received plenty of media attention. Much of the coverage and comment has served to distort a proper understanding of the events that led up to the decision and of related issues. This document sets out the facts and debunks the myths.

Platts announced that it will launch the world's first daily metallurgical coal assessments on March 15th 2010, which will address miners and steel mills needs for an independent daily spot assessment in the burgeoning Asian market to better determine pricing for short and long term contracts.

The two assessments, reflecting hard coking coal loading in Australia for any destination and delivered into China from any potential source, complement both Platts' existing monthly coking coal assessments published in International Coal Report and Platts' IODEX iron ore assessments published in Steel Markets Daily providing greater transparency into pricing in the steelmaking supply chain in the Asia-Pacific region.

PTI reported that the Indian government has said multinational mining company Vedanta Resources has been found to have violated certain environmental regulations at its mining site in the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa.

A 3 member team of the Indian environment ministry, which submitted its report to the Mr Jairam Ramesh environment minister, has found evidence of violations of green norms at the company’s bauxite project in Kalahandi district of Orissa.