Egypt's Ezz Steel third-quarter net jumps

Egypt's largest steel producer, Ezz Steel, said on Tuesday its third-quarter net income surged from a year earlier, when lower prices and soaring costs hammered profit margins.

An uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak last February, and the turmoil rocked Ezz Steel, which gets much of its business from infrastructure and real estate sectors plunged into crisis.

Industry officials say Egyptian steel mills have been working at around half their capacity and turning to export markets to offset the slump in demand at home.

But Ezz Steel's third-quarter figures painted a much more optimistic picture, with turnover up about 18 percent year-on-year to 4.8 billion Egyptian pounds, and long steel sales volumes in the first nine months of 2011 were up 5 percent, it said in a statement.

"This increase over the previous year was to meet continued domestic demand for Ezz Steel's long products, which has remained strong," it said.

The company said long product prices had risen 27 percent in both local and export markets, while flat steel prices rose by 17 percent domestically and by 22 percent at export.