Eighth largest steel maker in the world, Tata Steel has seen a drop in the sales of the company in India.

To be precise the sales remained flat at 1.4 million tons during the first quarter ending June 2010. What is hurting the economy more is the fact that the domestic demand, which invariably remains high, failed to gain anything for the firm.

Weak market sentiments the world over also created trouble for the steel maker. Most importantly, the sale of long and flat products was hurt. The saving grace, however, was the auto industry that saw an increase of 20 per cent.

In June, Tata Steel had increased its stake in Canadian mining firm, New Millennium Capital to 2.7 per cent and had taken over 14.2 million shares. This costed the company 20 million Canadian dollars. This too has put a lot of pressure on the financial of the firm.

As for the financial of the company, Tata Steel saw a profit of Rs 2434.06 crore in Q4 March 2010 as against a net loss of Rs 4535.54 crore in Q4 March 2009.

Because of this, the share price of the firm dipped down badly during the day.