Metal Bulletin recently reported the predictions of V. Mahadevan, president of the Indian Institute of Foundrymen. Within three years, he said, India could replace Japan as the third largest producer in the world of castings. The expansion is driven by the demands of the rapidly developing Indian auto industry — not just demands for domestic [...]
I can’t say that I am shocked by these survey results which were just released over the weekend by buying consortium Prime Advantage. According to the press release, of the 100 member companies that responded to the survey, 46% said that raw materials, “which include stainless steel, nickel, copper and other metals and plastics were [...]
Note: This is part two of a two-part series discussing a recent report from Ernst & Young. Part one offers additional insight and an introduction to the topic. Inaccurate Analytics The Ernst & Young report expresses disdain at the accuracy of metals price predictions, noting the disappointing errors of the past few years. The writers suggest [...]
Note: This is part one of a two-part series. The mining sector saw $70 billion in transactions during 2006 alone, and a recent study from Ernst & Young suggests that this number will rise in 2007 and 2008, particularly if BHP Billiton moves forward in their bid to overtake Rio Tinto — a topic that was [...]
The brass producers and distributors are under pressure, and I don’t just mean water pressure [pun intended]. Copper and brass shipments in the USA have been down since the summer of 2007 due to continued cut backs in new housing construction starts. The housing industry is by far the largest end user of copper and [...]
BHP Billiton, the world’s leading diversified mining company, tried to win over smaller rival Rio Tinto through a hostile bid last week to create the world’s third-largest corporation, behind Exxon Mobil and General Electric. The proposed corporation would become what Purchasing.com calls “a mining giant worth approximately $400 billion and possibly … the world’s largest iron-ore supplier” — [...]
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris has just released their Composite Leading Indicators (CLI) for the major economies. Despite the dry economic analysis, one can read some very interesting predictions. I should start here by defining CLI as a qualitative rather than quantitative measure of the trends in an economy. A [...]
Happy Monday. I’m sorry to do this to you but I must go off on a slight rant. I saw an article in ThomasNet (they also have a blog) that came out last week with the headline Chinese Subsidies Hobble US Steel Industry and thought, hmmm….this is going to be interesting. The article discusses a [...]
