MUMBAI (Commodity Online): Steel stocks recorded high gains on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) as the Sensex gained marginally by 0.6% to 17080 points during the afternoon trading session today.

Leading steel stocks including Tata Steel Ltd and JSW Steel Ltd witnessed high buoyancy. Tata Steel Ltd (BOM: 500470) was trading at Rs.521 up over 2%, while JSW Steel Ltd (BOM: 500228) traded at Rs.898 up close to 3.5% on BSE today.

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Tata Steel said steel sales from its Indian operations rose by 19% to 1.46 million tones in second quarter 2009 over the same period last year. The announcement was made during trading hours today.

The stock had outperformed the market past one quarter, jumping 28.74% as against 20.76% rise in the Sensex.

The world's sixth largest steel maker by capacity said that steel sales rose 21% to 2.88 million tonnes in April-September 2009 over April-September 2008. Sales of long products, used in construction, jumped 49% in the same period.

The Indian operations account for about a quarter of the group's total annual global capacity of 30 million tonnes, which includes unit Corus, Europe's second-largest steelmaker.

Domestic steel makers had raised prices of flat products such as plates and sheets, mainly used in manufacturing automobiles, refrigerators and washing machines, by about 3-5% from 1 September 2009, in line with international prices.

Tata Steel had raised prices of flat products by Rs.1,500 a tonne. Prices of long steel products used in construction and infrastructure sector, however, were left unchanged.

Tata Steel had reported a net loss of Rs.2208.68 crore in Q1 June 2009 on a consolidated basis as against a net profit of Rs.3900.90 crore in Q1 June 2008. Consolidated net sales declined 46.6% to Rs.23180.51 crore in Q1 June 2009 over Q1 June 2008.

The weak performance was attributed to the lower demand and a sudden termination of off-take agreements by four companies from its Teesside steel plant in the UK.

While, JSW Steel had announced that production of flat rolled products rose 28% to 9.23 lakh tonnes and long rolled products jumped 216% to 2.17 lakh tonnes in Q2 September 2009 over Q2 September 2008.

The company has achieved the highest ever-quarterly production, JSW Steel said in a filing with BSE.

JSW Steel's net profit rose 55% to Rs 340.02 crore on 6.1% rise in net sales to Rs 3893.87 crore in Q1 June 2009 over Q1 June 2008.