Group items tagged

Wolverine Tube (Canada) Inc., which was sold to a group of Canadian private investors in July 2008, has been renamed to Great Lakes Copper Inc. The company is Canada's leading fabricator of copper tube products for the industrial and refrigeration end-use markets.

Nexans, the large French wire and cable maker, announced that it has won a EUR80M (USD104.5M) contract to supply and install a 100km long high voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine cable in Newfoundland, Canada. The cable will form part of a new HVDC transmission link in Canada that stretches 1,100km. The submarine cable, which uses copper wire as its conductive core, will be manufactured in the company's NVC factory in Tokyo. The announcement is the second large submarine cable contract the company has won in the last 3 months, following the announcement that Nexans won the contract to supply and install a EUR300M (USD387.4M) submarine cable connecting Italy and Montenegro in late October 2012.

"A peer-reviewed life-cycle assessment (LCA) study shows a major decline in energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions for primary aluminum production in the U.S. and Canada. The study covers all life cycle impacts from aluminum production through semi-fabrication."

This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Copper in Thousands of Metric Tons. The specific end-use segments discussed are Building and Construction, Electrical and Electronic, Industrial Machinery and Equipment, Transportation, and Consumer and General Products. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America. and Rest of World.

Still, the top 10, which is ranked according to Google's search volume index, offers a glimpse of relative interest in the technology. The numbers represent the likelihood of users in each country searching for "hybrid car," on a scale of 0-100. Google divides the total number of searches for each country by the number of searches for this particular term, and then normalizes the data based on the country's traffic volume. 1. United States: 100 2. Malaysia: 66 3. Canada: 60 4. Singapore: 56 5. Australia: 45 6. New Zealand: 42 7. South Korea: 35 8. India: 30 9. Hong Kong: 23 10. United Kingdom: 22

Nexans, the world's largest cable maker, has announced its sales results for Q1 2009. In the three months to March 31, sales amounted to 1.245 billion euros (US$1.61 billion), down by 28.5% compared with the same period in 2008 at constant metal prices. Net debt at the end of Q1 was reduced to 362 million euros (US$468 million) compared to 536 million euros (US$693 million) at the end of Q4 2008. The company said that in response to the economic crisis, it will accelerate restructuring and cut the workforce by 900. Nexans has restructured its business in Canada while it intends to shut down its Building Cable business in Germany. Further plans may be announced mainly in Europe.

The Copper and Brass Fabricators Council said that US imports of brass mill products in May declined by 34.9% y-o-y to 35,348,294 lbs whilst exports plummeted by 43.9% y-o-y to 16,120,361 lbs. The leading exports destination in May was Canada and most imports came from China. Imports of flat rolled products reached 6,855,548 lbs, while exports amounted to 5,671,217 lbs. Imports of tube products were 20,966,908 lbs and exports 5,259,454 lbs. Rods, bars and sections imports were 5,810,096 lbs whilst exports 3,628,657 lbs. Finally, imported alloy wire added up to 1,715,743 lbs and exports totalled 1,561,033 lbs.

While older municipalities across Canada are busy replacing lead distribution water supply pipes that have been in the ground since the last century, others are having to replace pipes made of polybutylene (PB) that were installed as recently as 25 years ago. The polybutylene plastic service pipes were installed in the 1970s and 1980s to connect street mains to the home as a cheaper alternative to copper piping. However, the polybutylene pipes were subject to collapse, and over time have become brittle, are cracking and leaking water.

ICSG 1 Feb 09 - Based on existing facilities and announced project developments, annual mine production capacity in the period 2009-2013 is expected to grow at an average rate of around 4.3% per year (%/yr) to reach 23.1 Mt in 2013, an increase of around 3.6 Mt (19%) from that in 2009. Of the total increase, copper in concentrate capacity is expected to increase by 2.7Mt (4.3%/yr) to reach 17.9 Mt and solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW) production by 820,000t (4.4%/yr) to reach 5.2 Mt. Most of the new mine projects and expansions are located in Brazil, Chile, Congo, Mongolia, Peru, the United States and Zambia, which together account for around 2.6 Mt (73%) of the projected mine capacity increase during this period. Annual smelter capacity is projected to grow by an average of 2.6%/yr to reach 20.2 Mt in 2013, an increase of 2 Mt (11%) from that in 2009. Asia will be the leading contributor to growth (1.8 Mt), with expansions and new projects expected mostly in China, but also in India, Indonesia and Iran. Africa is the second leading contributor owing to developments in Zambia. North American smelting capacity will fall by 12% (250kt) due to closures of plants in Canada. The ICSG tabulations indicate that world refinery capacity will reach 26.6 Mt in 2013, an increase of 3.2 Mt (13%) from that in 2009. About 2.3 Mt of the expansion is expected to come from electrolytic refineries and 820,000t from electrowinning capacity. Electrolytic refinery capacity growth is projected to average 3.1%/yr, exceeding the projected growth in smelter capacity, and electrowinning capacity growth (at the refinery level) is expected to average 4.3%/yr. About one half (1.5 Mt) of the world refinery capacity increase during this period is expected to come from electrolytic refineries in China; about 25% (830,000 t) from electrolytic capacity increases in India, Indonesia and Iran; and about 20% (600,000 t) from electrowinning capacity increases in Congo, Peru and Zambia.