http://agmetalminer.com/2009/11/03/as-the-copper-price-rises-so-does-the-theft/ Sourcing & Trading Intelligence for Global Metals Markets Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:12:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://agmetalminer.com/2009/11/03/as-the-copper-price-rises-so-does-the-theft/comment-page-1/#comment-18905 Ian Falconer Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:31:51 +0000 http://agmetalminer.com/?p=1858#comment-18905 In the run up to peak price in 2008 organised copper thefts in the UK got so bad that they were referred to SOCA (the UK's FBI equivalent). Gangs would raid isolated industrial sites during the weekend and strip the machinery and even buried cables for resale as scrap. I was running a quarry in East Anglia when criminals stripped a neighboring competitors processing plant. They (the other quarry) were down for a fortnight and we were very nervous. A sister site of ours a few miles away suffered a similar fate when a gang drove off with 2km of power cable from a conveyor system. The thieves weren't very sophisticated. They used a axe and a tractor to cut the cable then rip it from the conveyor. They had no way of knowing whether the current had be switched off for the weekend or not. We were told in both cases that the police had a strong suspicion who the culprits were but there was no evidence to support prosecution. Copper is not easily traced once it gets to the scrap yard, at least not by the coppers. In the run up to peak price in 2008 organised copper thefts in the UK got so bad that they were referred to SOCA (the UK’s FBI equivalent). Gangs would raid isolated industrial sites during the weekend and strip the machinery and even buried cables for resale as scrap.
I was running a quarry in East Anglia when criminals stripped a neighboring competitors processing plant. They (the other quarry) were down for a fortnight and we were very nervous. A sister site of ours a few miles away suffered a similar fate when a gang drove off with 2km of power cable from a conveyor system. The thieves weren’t very sophisticated. They used a axe and a tractor to cut the cable then rip it from the conveyor. They had no way of knowing whether the current had be switched off for the weekend or not.
We were told in both cases that the police had a strong suspicion who the culprits were but there was no evidence to support prosecution.
Copper is not easily traced once it gets to the scrap yard, at least not by the coppers.

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