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Another bad sign for copper demand appeared in the news today. In the UK, Jaguar Land Rover plans to lay off 850 agency workers, mostly IT and engineering staff, at plants in West Midlands and Warwickshire. Staff members at Castle Bromwich, Solihull, Whitley and Gaydon are told that they will lose their jobs by the end of this year. The company claimed the decision as 'responsible and rapid action for the challenging environment it faces'. The company employs 16,000 staff at plants in the region at the moment.

Following the application of copper and copper alloy products to cultivation of fish on the sea, which began in October 2011 for the first time in Korea, study on the application of them to fish cultivation on land

Prysmian, the Italy-based manufacturer of wire and cable announce on 26th February that it has secured a €350M (US$462M) contract from Alstom Grid to supply the DolWin3 project with power cables. The contract, which will involve supplying and installing 900MW submarine and land cables along a 78km sea route and an 83km land route, will connect off-shore wind farms in the North Sea to the German power grid. The work is scheduled to be completed by December 2016.

A new era for commodities Cheap resources underpinned economic growth for much of the 20th century. The 21st will be different. NOVEMBER 2011 * Richard Dobbs, Jeremy Oppenheim, and Fraser Thompson Source: McKinsey Global Institute, Sustainability & Resource Productivity Practice In This Article Exhibit: In little more than a decade, soaring commodity prices have erased a century of steady declines. About the authors Comments (2) Has the global economy entered an era of persistently high, volatile commodity prices? Our research shows that during the past eight years alone, they have undone the decline of the previous century, rising to levels not seen since the early 1900s (exhibit). In addition, volatility is now greater than at any time since the oil-shocked 1970s because commodity prices increasingly move in lockstep. Our analysis suggests that they will remain high and volatile for at least the next 20 years if current trends hold-barring a major macroeconomic shock-as global resource markets oscillate in response to surging global demand and inelastic supplies. Back to top Demand for energy, food, metals, and water should rise inexorably as three billion new middle-class consumers emerge in the next two decades.1 The global car fleet, for example, is expected almost to double, to 1.7 billion, by 2030. In India, we expect calorie intake per person to rise by 20 percent during that period, while per capita meat consumption in China could increase by 60 percent, to 80 kilograms (176 pounds) a year. Demand for urban infrastructure also will soar. China, for example, could annually add floor space totaling 2.5 times the entire residential and commercial square footage of the city of Chicago, while India could add floor space equal to another Chicago every year. Such dramatic growth in demand for commodities actually isn't unusual. Similar factors were at play throughout the 20th century as the planet's population tripled and demand for various resource

China's Yunnan province will buy 1 million tonnes of base metals to help smelters in the region that are struggling with weak domestic demand and low prices, a report on the Ministry of Land and Resources' website said on Monday.

Wisconsin regulatory officials, utility companies and environmentalists agree that more line capacity is needed to transport electricity generated by the growing number of wind farms. But they're not sure ITC's plan for giant-sized lines is the answer. Michael Vickerman, executive director of the Madison environmental group, Renew Wisconsin, said he has "reservations" about the need for 765-kilovolt lines. Smaller transmission upgrades can accommodate new wind generation, he said. Wisconsin Public Service Commission Chairman Eric Callisto also has questions. "I don't want to close any doors to what they have proposed but I have lots of grave concerns about the cost," he said. ITC is proposing "very large lines" that would require "very large right-of-ways," Callisto said. A right-of-way is the legal permission to use a property owner's land or the area above it.

El Sewedy Cables announced that it will establish a low-voltage power cable plant in Yemen. The investment of the project will amount to US$42M and it will be the first cable manufacturer in the country. The capacity of the plant will be 12,000t of copper and aluminium cables per annum. The project, to be build on government leased land and tax exempt for five years, will be a joint venture between El Sewedy Cables (70%) and Hassan & Masoud Abo Gaig (30%).

Prysmian announced that it has been awarded a project worth more than €250ml by the Dutch-German grid operator TenneT in order to link the offshore wind park DanTysk in the North Sea to the German Grid. Prysmian said that the interconnection comprises of HVDC subsea and land cable types at a voltage of 320 kV DC along a 159 km sea route and then a 45 km land route. The cables and accessories will be manufactured from 2012 onwards at Prysmian's HV factories in Europe.

"He concludes that standard macroeconomic factors alone (growth, interest rates, global growth, and global financial market volatility) fail to fully explain the recent investment deceleration. He further concludes that while the importance of structural factors in explaining the recent weakening of aggregate investment is not entirely clear, at the micro level, panel data analysis suggests that improving the business environment by reducing costs of doing business, deepening the financial system, and developing infrastructure, could stimulate corporate investment." The IMF's (2013a) recent staff report on India argues that several causes of weaker growth seem to be of a supply-side nature. The following key factors are listed as possible contributors to the recent investment slowdown: Rising policy uncertainty. In particular, high profile tax policy decisions announced in the 2012/13 Budget have reduced foreign investors' interest in India, while the increasing difficulty of obtaining land use and environmental permits have raised regulatory uncertainty for infrastructure and other large-scale projects. Delayed project approvals and implementation. As a reaction to high-profile governance scandals, project approvals, clearances, and implementation have slowed sharply. Supply bottlenecks are particularly pronounced in mining and power, with attendant consequences for the broader economy, especially manufacturing.

The TenneT TSO says it has started work on the large-scale expansion of the 110 kV transmission grid in the Noordoostpolder region in the Netherlands. The company added that it has started preparing land for construction at the site of a planned new substation at Ens, and on Westermeerweg near the site of the new Noordoostpolder Wind Farm. In early August, work will start at Westermeerweg on the construction of a 16-km-long underground cable to Emeloord, which will be followed by the construction of the cable section from Emeloord to Ens. Cables will be delivered later this summer. TenneT expects the first turbine of the Noordoostpolder Wind Farm to be connected to the HV grid in Q1 2014. By then, a total of 27 km of cable will have been installed.