Stamping Out a Living

The high price of aluminum and copper has led to bizarre incidents like this. In another one, which I didn't quote, a man was electrocuted trying to "liberate" downed hydro wires. But they were still live.


Yahoo! News
Thieves pried away sections of copper roofs, gutters and wiring from four Quebec City churches over several nights last week, the latest in a string of bizarre thefts across Canada linked to high metal prices, police told AFP.
The heists, described as the boldest so far, follow thefts of aluminum ladders and soccer goal posts in Vancouver, manhole covers in Montreal and trucks filled with scrap metal en route to foundries in Toronto, police said.
Emboldened thieves have stripped unfinished new homes of their copper piping, stolen park light fixtures, and even wires from hydro and cable companies.

Labels: Copper

In what should be no surprise to readers here (I've been saying this for a while), MEPS says the markets are actually not serving metal suppliers and metal consumers well.

See this paragraph excerpt from a larger document.

The recent roller-coaster ride in world commodity markets does not bode well for steel futures. Prices for non-ferrous metals have been driven up to record highs by pressures that have less to do with the basics of supply and demand, and more from speculation by investment funds. In mid-April the inevitable correction took place and metal prices tumbled – for nickel and zinc by as much as 7 percent in a single day. This was attributed purely to “sentiment�. Market fundamentals had not changed significantly. The world steel market measures more than 1,000 million tonnes. It would be absurd to have the price of this physical metal determined by dealings between financial speculators who have their own agenda.

Labels: nickel

I use an internet service that, back in the day of paper, was called a newspaper clipping service. It emails me every day a list of articles containing words that are important to me, my business and my blogs.

So, for instance, all of my customers who are publicly traded, and even the bigger ones that are not, I list with this service. I find things out that otherwise it might be months until I learned if this little eagle eyed robot wasn't keeping an eye peeled for me.

I also have it scan for words of import to metal stamping in general, like copper, steel and aluminum. This occasionally has some amusing side effects - I learn about every (English language) production of Steel Magnolias in existance, and every theft of copper wire (now that copper has become so expensive).

The troller picked up these articles this morning about Aluminum. They only peripherally involve Aluminum, but of course the troller is a very simple beast - it's not analyzing the content, only running a text search. I have no doubt that in 5 years AI will read the stories and figure out if Aluminum is a major factor in the story, and then I'll stop getting these.

In the mean time, what a comment on our society!

Troubled congressman keeps his cool / FBI says Louisiana lawmaker on film with $100,000 bribe:
It takes a particular kind of nerve to be filmed taking $100,000 in alleged bribe money out of an FBI informant's car, have the FBI later find the very same money wrapped in aluminum foil in your freezer -- and then adamantly claim that you have done nothing wrong.

I'd say it does.

Other people had amusing things to say about the scandal.

In an article in the Baltimore Sun with the byline Democrats have criticized GOP ethics, but now face fallout from Jefferson case

"Why the freezer? Why not the mattress?" asked Lara Brown, a political scientist

Jefferson's troubles are "a throwback to the kind of corruption one would have expected in the '40s and '50s," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist

But another historian said

"I don't remember anything along the lines of money in the freezer," said Don Ritchie, a Senate historian. "We've been calling them 'frozen assets' around here."

On a more serious note, another big use for Aluminum in recent years has been to bludgeon your neighbour with an Aluminum baseball bat. This is only one of about 5 stories like this I've heard.

Hate Crime Trial Begins for Man Accused of Baseball Bat Bludgeoning
from the New York Sun

The defendant, Nicholas Minucci, 19, is charged with assaulting Glenn Moore, 23, with a 34-inch aluminum Louisville Slugger in the early morning hours of June 29. [the trial opened with ...] prosecutors describing the attack as unprovoked racial violence and the defense depicting it as community policing.

Community policing. What an interesting turn of phrase.

If you're interested in the man behind the Aluminum, google him

For an insight into why Aluminum prices are so high, check out the astonishing number of assaults with Aluminum baseball bats. According to Google, about 102,000 articles.

You know, every time they take a bat into evidence lockup, it reduces the amount of free Aluminum left in the world for metal stamping ...

Labels: Copper

Hi Guys!

This has nothing to do with stamping, well except maybe for stamping out junk.

Web servers keep track, in a general way, of who visits each site, and from where.

The "from where" statistics this month are horribly polluted (to the point of being useless) by gambling sites. I can't believe these are legitimate visitors who came to me after gambling online. I mean, check this out:

http://play-casino-games.online62.com
http://online-casinos.jeu8.com
http://casino-gratuit.jeu8.com
http://jeux-blackjack.jeu8.com
http://casino-gratuit.cfr8.com
http://blackjack.game71.com
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http://black-jack.game71.com
http://www.roulette-online.biz
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http://black-jack.online26.com
http://www.roulette-game-trx.com
http://slots.jeu8.com
http://online-casinos.cfr8.com
http://play-blackjack.game71.com
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Can anyone explain to me what's going on here?

bloomberg.com
Copper and aluminum futures in Shanghai fell on concerns supply is outpacing demand.
Copper stockpiles rose by almost a fifth last week to a 12- week high, the Shanghai Futures Exchange said May 19. Commodity prices had their biggest weekly drop in more than 25 years in the U.S. and Europe last week, led by metals and grains.

Remember this great link to current copper pricing.

It looks like copper fell as the markets opened in Asia but rose again as the markets opened in New York. At the moment, it's reporting $3.425, up from $3.40 over the weekend.

Labels: Copper

A surprisingly (at least to me) little reported small side story - it won't bring anyone back, but ...

if you stayed up and watched, as I did, in fascination and horror, the Sago mine disaster as it was unfolding, you will remember the elation and cheering when it was announced that all 12 had been found alive, followed by a long time, more than 2 hours, when only one ambulance went from the mine head to the hospital. Then came the stampede away from the church and (if you were watching CNN) the woman who showed up and said to Anderson Cooper "They lied to us .. they're all dead" and his stunned face as he got her to say it, again and again, in different ways, trying to make sense of what he'd just heard, and trying, I assume, to figure out which version was correct. It's been a long time since I've seen a reporter so stunned and at a loss for words.

A state mining inspector believes he may have been the source of the misinformation that 12 miners had survived January's Sago Mine disaster.

Bill Tucker is an assistant inspector at large for the state Office of Miners' Health Safety and Training.

He testified at a public hearing in Buckhannon this morning that he may have said 'They're alive.'

Tucker doesn't remember his exact words. He says he was just screaming for help.

Tucker then started checking on the miners, and realized that the first did not have a pulse. Further checks revealed that only one -- Randal McCloy Jr. -- was alive.

At that point, Tucker picked up the radio and yelled that there was only one alive. But by that time, the message that 12 had survived had been leaked to the families.

Ron Hixson also was with the rescue crew that found the bodies.

He spoke on behalf of himself and all the rescuers, offering an apology for the heartache the miscommunication caused.

Yahoo! News
An explosion in an eastern Kentucky coal mine killed five miners while one other miner was able to get out alive, Gov. Ernie Fletcher said Saturday. The blast at the Darby Mine No. 1 in Harlan County occurred between midnight and 1 a.m. while a maintenance shift was on duty, said Amy Louviere, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.

This as, earlier in the week, hearings were going on about Sago, the mine explosion and fire that happened over the new year, and how to improve mine safety.

AP via Yahoo! News
Mittal Steel Co. sweetened its hostile bid for Arcelor SA on Friday in an attempt to increase pressure on its rival to agree to a deal, raising its offer by 34 percent and saying it would reduce the Mittal family's stake in the company.
Merging the world's top steelmakers would create a company with nearly a 10 percent share of global production
[...]
Mittal said it would also adopt a one-share, one-vote structure that replaces a current structure with different classes of stock holding different rights. If the offer is accepted, Mittal Steel said the family stake in the new combined company "will be around 45 percent in share capital and voting rights." The family currently controls an 87 percent stake.

AP via Yahoo! News
Steel producer AK Steel Holding Corp. wants an agreement with its locked-out union as soon as possible, but the union has been unrealistic, the company's chief executive told shareholders Friday.
"Middletown cannot be an island. Middletown Works is out of step and the AEIF (Armco Employees Independent Federation) is out of touch with reality," Wainscott said in remarks released by the company.
AK Steel says that it must have what it calls "new era" labor agreements to make its labor costs competitive.
"That means we need fewer employees, fewer job classes, defined contribution pensions and active and retiree health care cost sharing," Wainscott said. "If we have any hope of improving our competitiveness and sustaining profitability, we must have these things."
He said the company has negotiated such agreements at other plants[...]

Bloomberg.com
Copper and zinc dropped for a second consecutive day in London amid concern rising global interest rates will curb demand for metals.

Meanwhile,
Copper Consumers Seek More Talks With LME
over record prices for the commodity and the way it's traded on the exchange.
Consumers want to look at the way the LME functions in terms of hedging, price discovery and the physical market, said Simon Payton, the council's secretary general.
[...]
Hedge and pension funds have been targeting copper and other commodities, seeking better returns than from stocks and bonds.

No kidding, eh?

This might be a lot of fun for people who love to play their little games with the commodities market, but this is making stamping a living out of brass or copper a total crapshoot. My customers won't accept the price increases I need to get for this stuff. Never mind the fact that I have no other choice ...

``Prices are very bad, very difficult,'' Centner said in an interview yesterday. ``The financing aspect, the working capital issue, is becoming a nightmare. In general the copper business is built on credit.''
About 85 percent of total turnover on the LME may be derived from funds rather than from normal industry business
The LME has said that it strives to provide ``an orderly market'' for metals and would take action if it identified any cases of manipulation. An LME spokesman wasn't available to comment for this article.
"it's difficult to change the rules because it's a free market and they can't forbid funds access to the market."

Labels: Copper

This has been coming for months, so it's really no surprise. But it just feels like bad news for the small metal stamper ... I can't prove it, but it just feels like too much concentration of the market in too few hands.

Canadian Business Online
Mittal Steel Co. officially launched its $27 billion US offer for rival Arcelor SA, seeking a tie-up that would join the world's two largest steelmakers into a global titan.
The cash and stock offer, launched in Luxembourg, France and Belgium, is open until June 29. Mittal said it also will launch a bid in Spain and the United States when market regulators clear the offer.
[...]
Merging the world's top steelmakers would create a company with nearly a 10 per cent share of global steel production

AP via Washington Post
United Auto Workers members have voted to authorize a strike against auto parts supplier Delphi Corp., adding a new threat to already tense negotiations between the two sides and Delphi's former parent, General Motors Corp.

This is cute ... little charts of recent past steel prices ... from MEPS

Yahoo! News
Copper prices fell sharply Monday as traders took profits from recent highs.
The July futures fell as far as $3.4640 per pound in overnight screen trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a loss of 40 cents. By Monday morning, however, they had trimmed this loss to 9.4 cents at $3.7700.
There does not appear to be any major metals-specific industry news behind Monday's decline, said Edward Meir, analyst with Man Financial.
"Instead, we think the weakness has been brought about by the increasing alarm expressed in the swooning U.S. equity markets over rising commodity prices and their impact on inflation," he said. "This is a legitimate concern, as rising inflation will keep the Fed on a more hawkish course for much longer, and eventually lead to a slowdown in growth.

In other words, there's no good technical reason having to do with actual mining or consuming of coppoer behind this recent price rise, it's all money speculation.

I don't think stampers are well served when their base metal prices are so fluid.

Labels: Copper

manufacturingnews.com
'While China's workers and environment pay most of the cost, we outside the country's borders are ever eager to purchase low-price goods, irrespective of the environmental and social impacts, particularly ones as distant and hidden as those in rural China. We consume the benefits and yet, indirectly we also bear the costs. As the word's companies continue to rush in to set up factories to avoid environmental and occupational regulations elsewhere, as well as unionized labor, they are backed by the state in this. They are dragging communities worldwide in a downward race to the bottom as they struggle to compete with China's socially and ecologically destructive industrial platform.'

Copper briefly touched $4 US this week but fell on Friday to close at $3.836.
Less than a month ago I was writing about how it hit $3 and what a disaster that was.
Daily Telegraph
Copper posted its steepest fall in two weeks today on concerns that the doubling of prices to record highs in the past year may not be justified.

Labels: Copper

This is not good new for stampers of copper or brass parts trying to keep a steady price for their customers.
Bloomberg.com
Copper soared above $4 a pound for the first time and nickel and zinc rose to records on signs that higher prices have done nothing to curb demand. Gold climbed to a 26-year high and platinum jumped to the highest ever.
Stockpiles monitored by the London Metal Exchange fell the most in five weeks, as makers of wire and pipe tapped inventory to make up for a shortfall from mines. Strikes and declining ore grades in Mexico and Indonesia have cut copper output this year. Demand will climb 5.7 percent this year after rising 1.8 percent last year, according to Citigroup Inc.
[...] a London-based analyst said. ``Every day I'm stunned as prices keep going up.''

Labels: Copper, nickel

This might effect prices if you use this specific type of steel ... we don't so I don't know much about it.

But you have to wonder about the timing ... despite the denials.

CNN.com
Arcelor is accusing Mittal of infringing its intellectual property rights to Usibor, a highly resistant coated steel used in the automotive industry.
Arcelor said Thursday it had filed a lawsuit in the United States against Mittal Steel for copying a type of steel for the auto industry.
Arcelor spokesman Jean Lasar said the suit was not connected to Arcelor's efforts to fend off Mittal's takeover bid, which the company has rebuffed.

An interesting time to be increasing prices ...
AP via Yahoo! Finance
Steelmaker AK Steel Holding Corp. on Wednesday announced a price increase of about 6 percent on many of its products.
The price increase goes into effect with May 21 shipments of all hot-rolled and cold-rolled stainless steel sheet, strip, tubular quality and continuous mill plate products

We've been watching this labour action more closely than some, partly because the AK workers have their own web site where you can watch their side of it develop, and partly because they wrote me and alerted me to their web site.

And of course, we always are interested in safety in the steel workplace issues.

Coshocton Tribune
Federal safety investigators are taking a second look at an April 9 explosion at AK Steel's Middletown Works after the accident last week that claimed the life of a temporary replacement worker.
Richard T. Gilgrist, Cincinnati area director for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said Wednesday his office is looking into the training of the temporary workers who have operated the mill since the company locked out members of Armco Employees Independent Federation on Feb. 28 in a contract dispute.

Is it just me, or are we hearing about more labour unrest this year than in the past few years? Click the link above to see google results for 2006 labour unrest. There are pages and pages of articles about it. Workers on strike or threatening strike or other job actions, not just in one industry or one location. France, Russia, Iran, China, North America, hotel workers, metal workers, teachers, airlines, public sector workers.

Hotel contracts expire soon in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and have already expired in much of Toronto.

AK steel has been stopped for 2 months now. A second strike at another AK facility seems to have been averted just yesterday (still to be voted on).

The Cooper Tools strike outside of Syracuse has just ended, after 5 weeks.

Before I get caught in a firestorm, I'm not passing judgement on these situations - I don't know enough about any of them, let alone the totality of them. It just seems like I'm running into more and more descriptions online every day. Is that because there more information online these days or is labour unrest really on the rise?

MEPS is a bit heavy on large numbers that are hard for the average person to make sense of, so I've taken them out in most places. And the MEPS report is more detailed, listing region by region expectations. I kept in the North American stuff and skipped the rest. You can read the entire synopsys by following the clickable link above and, by clicking a link there, the entire survey from which the synopsys was created.

But the short version is, steel production is up, steel demand is up, imports are not hitting the North American and EU markets for some reason, so prices are likely to stay firm (their way of saying prices will stay elevated) for the rest of 2006.

MEPS
MEPS estimate for world crude steel output [is] an increase of 4.1 percent over the 2005 outturn. Blastfurnace iron production is predicted to [be] 5.4 percent up on the figure recorded in the previous twelve months. Only modest gains are expected for direct reduced ironmaking.
The majority of the steel output improvement will take place in China and India. In these countries the blast furnace/oxygen steelmaking process is dominant. [...] The high cost of energy is restricting the rise in direct reduction of iron in several countries.
[...] Chinese mills will be responsible for almost 80 percent of the total, despite the anticipated slowdown in the rate of growth in steelmaking in the country in 2006, compared to recent years.
[...]
North American crude steel output is expected to increase by almost [...] 2 percent this year in comparison to 2005. Most of the improvement is expected to occur from the integrated producers.

MEPS STEEL NEWS
North American steel conditions

High levels of imports has not impacted on steel prices because supply from local mills has been kept in check through maintenance programmes and the prospect of reduced import volumes - particularly after the accident at CSN in Brazil. We detect negative customer sentiment about steel availability in the short term. Domestic mill order books are booming and supply shortfalls are a genuine prospect. Prices are now forecast to rise by approximately 6 percent over the next six months.

LATEST MARKET ROUNDUP FROM MEPS
There is a fair amount of concern in the US amongst service centres, OEM's and end-users that supply is becoming very tight. The situation appears to be driven by supply-side controls rather than any significant uptick in real demand. Nevertheless, distributors are busy and buyers have accepted a transaction price increase of $US20 per tonne. Producers are talking of further hikes for June. So far, rising import volumes have failed to adversely impact the market.
As expected, transaction values are moving up in Canada, where market conditions are good. Further increases are anticipated. Supply is extremely limited because of mill production issues and this scenario is likely to continue into period three. Resale margins are holding steady.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
James W. Murphy began his career in the steel industry in the mailroom of the Allegheny Ludlum plant in Brackenridge. He ended it after co-founding a steel company of his own.
Mr. Murphy, known as Jim, died Saturday at age 87.
In his years with Allegheny Ludlum, he rose from the mailroom to vice president of sales.
In 1976, he and about 20 other employees bought Allegheny Ludlum's bar products division and formed a new company called AlTech Specialty Steel Corp.

This article is written from the perspective of a stock investor but still contains some insight into current problems in the steel service center sector.

The Motley Fool via Yahoo! News
These aren't the best of times to be a middleman in the steel sector. Though Steel Technologies is one of the largest North American processors of flat-rolled steel, it finds itself in a tough spot. On one hand, steel suppliers like U.S. Steel and Nucor are enjoying a pretty solid pricing environment. On the other, Steel Technologies is seeing some lag in passing those prices on to customers.
As you might imagine, that's a tough environment in which to prosper, and Steel Technologies isn't exactly prospering. Revenue was down 13% this quarter, and gross margins were cut in half. Given that the company wasn't able to cut operating expenses in tune with the gross profit drop, operating income dropped considerably.

cbs2chicago.com
A fire sparked by a spill of about 200 tons of molten iron has shut down part of Mittal Steel USA's plant at Indiana Harbor.

Company officials say the 2,000-degree liquid metal that started the fire spilled Friday night from a giant ladle when a crane's hoist became entangled with the ladle's tilting mechanism.