[Ferro-Alloys.com] According to data of National Bureau of Statistics, China produced 78.975 million tons of crude steel and 3 million tons of ferroalloys in March.

Around 30pc of BHP's annual sales comes from exports to China. BHP is one of the world's largest exporters of iron ore and hard coking coal. It also ships thermal coal and copper.

Integrated steelmaker ArcelorMittal is taking a planned outage at one of the blast furnaces at its Burns Harbor mill.

The 2.73mn short ton (st)/yr blast furnace C is one of two at the Burns Harbor mill in Indiana. The company confirmed the outage, though it did not give any further specifics, citing the quiet period prior to its release of its first quarter results.

• [Editor:kangmingfei]