Copper end use trends

Rohm and Haas Company has reported second quarter 2008 sales of $2,567 million, a 17% increase over the same period in 2007, with Electronic Materials and the chemical businesses outside North America delivering strong growth. The Electronic Materials Group comprises two reportable segments which provide materials for use in applications such as telecommunications, consumer electronics and household appliances. Sales for the Electronic Materials Group were $536 million in the second quarter of 2008, up 34% over the same period in 2007, reflecting the impact of acquisitions in Display Technologies as well as solid organic growth of Electronic Technologies. The Electronic Technologies segment is comprised of the company's Semiconductor Technologies, Circuit Board Technologies and Packaging and Finishing Technologies business units. Sales for the segment of $460 million were up 16% versus the second quarter of 2007, driven by strong growth in Asia for all business units. Sales in the second quarter excluding precious metals pass-through sales were up 15%. Semiconductor Technologies sales grew 13%, reflecting strong demand and favorable currencies, particularly in the Asia Pacific Region. Circuit Board Technologies sales increased 20% as compared to the same period last year, with solid growth in the Asia Pacific Region more than offsetting declines in North America. Packaging and Finishing Technologies sales rose 20% versus last year, primarily driven by strong growth in precious metal sales and in process sales. Adjusted pre-tax earnings for this segment of $107 million were up 11% from the second quarter of 2007, reflecting increased demand and favorable currencies, partially offset by higher metal costs and increased costs related to expansion efforts, including the new Asia Technical Center in Taiwan.\n\n\n

Growth in Asia is illustrated from this reporting at multiple levels of business - Opportunities are available for copper in a multitude of applications.

The new material is most effective between 450° and 950°F-a typical \ntemperature range for power systems such as automobile engines. The application \nof TE material to automotive waste heat recovery systems is of interest to the \nresearch team, and to one of the project funders, BSST Corporation.

BHP Billiton is on course to report its sixth consecutive year of profits growth after the Anglo-Australian mining group on Wednesday published annual production figures that showed bumper results from its petroleum, iron ore, manganese and copper operations.

this first-of-a-kind motor converts light directly into mechanical energy,

NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) - Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc (FCX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Tuesday second-quarter profit fell 14 percent as output of the two metals dropped at its massive Grasberg mine in Indonesia.

LUSAKA, July 18 (Reuters) - Zambian authorities have granted a licence for the new Mkushi copper project where production of copper concentrate is scheduled to start in mid-2010 and peak at 59,000 tonnes

Encore Wire's six months ended 30th June 2008 net sales were US$604.6M, an increase of 1.7% from same period last year. The increase appears to be the result of higher prices of building wire. Net income was US$15Mfor the six months ended 30thJune 2008 versus US$26.1M in 2007. In Q2, net sales were US$322.8M versus US$333.6M same period last year. Net income for Q2 was US$1.3M compared to US$19.7M in Q2 2007. Encore Wire said that the slowdown in construction activity in the US continues to impact their business as it has over the last two years. Moreover, a number of competitors in the industry have responded to the downturn by cutting wire prices to maintain market share.

Zambia's copper output this year, which is already under threat from intermittent power outages, will be hit by the delay to the start of Lumwana mine's copper output this month, an industry official told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday.

General Motors Corp., along with a consortium of more than 30 utilities and a non-profit electric industry research group, has struck a deal to forestall potential problems when the company introduces its new electric vehicle to the nation's showrooms. An EPRI official also emphasized the grid aspects of the collaboration. Said Arshad Mansoor, the organization's vice president of power delivery: "Seemless integration of [plug-in hybrid electric vehicles] into the electric grid will require close collaboration between the automobile and electric sectors." The statements from EPRI and the car company also address safe and convenient vehicle charging, public education and other public policies, including codes and standards. Among the utility participants in the collaboration are Consolidated Edison of New York, Duke Energy, First Energy Corp., Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison Co. Others are listed as part of the EPRI statement. The research organization last year released a report along with the Natural Resources Defense Council that concluded plug-in hybrids had the potential to lower greenhouse gas emissions. GM, meanwhile, emphasized the cost benefit of the new vehicles, saying consumers could find that the per-mile expense of an electric vehicle would be about one-fifth that of a gas-powered car.

Companies would spend more than $6-billion on submarine and terrestrial fibre optic cable infrastructure projects in Africa over the next two years, as countries scramble to boost international connectivity, market analysis firm BMI-TechKnowledge (BMI-T) said on Wednesday. In its latest research report, entitled 'Outlook for submarine and terrestrial fibre-optic cable developments in Africa', BMI-T said that the effective high-speed internet services required for critical business, government and consumer applications have remained either unavailable or very expensive in Africa. Governments' awareness of this situation, and the perceived commercial attractiveness of the opportunity to close this gap, has given rise to the current frenetic activity for construction of submarine fibre cables on the continent. Investment in Africa's ICT infrastructure has improved significantly over the past decade. However, marked deficiencies persist in the backbone networks across the continent. "Although countries on the African west and southern coasts have access to fibre connectivity through the SAT-3 undersea cable, an estimated 80% of Africa's international voice and data traffic is carried via satellite," said Chanakira.

Last week the Spanish government announced plans to cut subsidies for solar photovoltaic (PV) power by about 75%. Although the nation expects to surpass its 2010 goal for installed solar by four fold, the down side is that generous subsidies for the industry have resulted in a ballooning tariff deficit for the country, which has risen to 4.85 billion euros, upfrom 745 million last year. Reuters reported that lending to the Spanish photovoltaic plants has risen to $3.59 billion in the year to day, up from $230.9 million euros last year and $192.44 million in 2006. As a result, the Spanish government will as the energy regulator to cap subsidies for new PV solar capacity at 300 megawatts (MW) per year--200 MW for rooftop systems and 100 MW for ground-mounted systems, which have been the highest growth area. CSP has been slower than PV technology in its emergence on the renewable energy scene, but expectations for the technology, which focuses the heat of the sun to produce steam to drive electricity producing turbines. Projects underway in the U.S. and Spain are expected to produce electricity that is cost-equivalent to electricity produced from burning coal or natural gas.

Credit-crunched Londoners grabbed pocketfuls of pennies today at the launch of a 20-foot billboard advert made entirely from one-pence coins. The unique installation - made using over 20,000 pennies - only lasted 30 minutes as hundreds of opportunistic passers-by seized their moment to pick up a penny or two

Yet another use for copper

The solar industry and semiconductor industry are intimately connected. Both industries rely on silicon and both use much of the same processing technology and supply chain to produce their products. Nowhere has this connection been on better display than last week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco California, where the Intersolar North America made its debut in conjunction with SEMICON West 2008. The show provided an opportunity for those in the two industries to connect and allowed those companies that work in both spaces to showcase their collective efforts. According to Chris O'Brien, Head of Market Development and Government Relations for North America for Oerlikon Solar, holding the two conferences together gave companies greater exposure and showed the promise of the U.S. solar market. In recent months a number of traditional semiconductor companies including Intel and National Semiconductor have made announcements that they are making plans to enter the solar industry in one way or another. Intel spun off it's solar research area into a new solar company called SpectraWatt. National Semiconductor announced that it will be introducing it's first solar product, SolarMagic, that could raise the efficiency of residential and industrial solar systems. Kevin Kayser, Senior Marketing Manager at National said that he product will be targeted at installers and integrators and much planning went into the company's decision to enter the solar space. "Photovoltaics currently has less than 1% of the energy market, but we think it has potentially one of the fastest growth rates of any alternative energy source. Now certainly we're looking at wind, we're looking geothermal, we're looking at other sources, but from an electronics point of view we saw that we had the most immediate potential impact in solar photovoltaics," Kayser said.

US speciality brass mill Ansonia Copper and Brass Inc. has announced that it will lay off 85 of the 102 employees at its Liberty Street, Ansonia, factory in Connecticut. The plant manufactures copper alloy rod and wires. Company President Raymond McGee said "it's a very, very difficult situation". He blamed the redundancies, on top of 76 employees laid off in April 2007, on the company's struggle with escalating costs. Since 2002 electricity costs have soared 239%, natural gas 200%, fuel oil 125%, and copper and nickel 500% apiece. Ansonia's other facility in Waterbury, CT, which manufacturers copper alloy tube is unaffected by the announcement.

Further evidence of the impact of the North American economic slowdown on copper demand has recently been published by the ABMS and government statistical bodies. North American copper wirerod production plummeted 9.6% year-on-year to 174,000 tonnes in April. Output had been on a downward trend but the magnitude of the deterioration in April has still come as something of a surprise. A year-on-year increase of 2.0% in North American output January had been followed a 1.0% fall in February and a 2.7% drop in March. In April Canadian output was flat year-on-year due to improving export sales to the US, while US production fell 9.8% year-on-year and Mexican shipments slumped by 17.5%. On a year-to-date basis North American wirerod production was 2.9% lower in the four months to April 2008. Weakening demand from the automotive industry, coupled with a resurgance in copper prices and the return of Russian wirerod imports has clearly led to a deteriorating market situation for domestic mills.

Mueller Industries second quarter results highlight the tough times that the US brass mill industry is facing, but that companies can still operate profitably in a challenging market environment. The company's plumbing and refrigeration segment saw sales fall 11% to US$404m, while its operating profits dropped 32% to US$35m. The company blamed lower shipment volumes and lower spreads for the weaker performance. Sales at the company's OEM division, which includes its brass rod activities, rose 10% year-on-year to US$354m, while its operating profits rose 5% to US$19m. The improvement here is due to acquisition of Extruded Metals. Commenting on the results Harvey Karp, Chairman of Mueller Industries said "Mueller's earnings for the first half of 2008 were achieved despite the continuing decline in the housing industry, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the turbulence in the financial markets, rising metal costs, sky-high energy prices and a slowing national economy. Considering these adverse circumstances, we are pleased with the results."

Venture capital is one of the pulses of the industry, and so a headline that VC investments are dropping by double digits is enough to catch the eye of anyone involved in the high tech ecosphere. But when you look at more data, things don't look bleak. On one hand, according to Dow Jones VentureSource, investment is down:\n\nIn the second quarter of 2008, quarterly venture capital investment in U.S. companies slipped below the $7 billion mark for the first time in 18 months. According to the Quarterly U.S. Venture Capital Report released today by Dow Jones VentureSource (http://www.venturecapital.dowjones.com), investment fell 12% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year with $6.64 billion put into 602 deals, the lowest quarterly deal count since 2005. The $7.58 billion invested in second quarter of 2007 was the second-highest quarterly totals recorded since the end of the dot-com boom in 2001.\n\nYet it's not all bad news because there was " steady deal activity and investment in the first half of the year," according to Dow Jones VentureSource director of global research Jessica Canning.\n\n"The movement of venture dollars from the traditional areas of information technology and health care toward burgeoning sectors like renewable energy, power management, and agriculture - or 'clean technology' areas - proves that venture capitalists are making good on their promise to tap opportunities in the massive energy market," said Ms. Canning.

SYDNEY, July 23 (Reuters) - BHP Billiton Ltd/Plc (ASX: BHP.ax) BLT.L, the world's biggest mining house, reported a raft of annual production gains on Wednesday led by strong fourth-quarter output of copper and iron ore, both of which are in high demand in China.

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Industrial, mining and property investors were still in a state of confusion over power utility Eskom's approach to new electricity connections, but the corporation promised on Tuesday that the issue would be clarified with the imminent release of a comprehensive policy, possibly by as early as next week. CEO Jacob Maroga - currently in Europe on a road show to expose potential investors to its R150-billion capital-raising plan - said last week that the utility had not yet determined just how much power could be allocated to new projects. However, he indicated that a needs analysis was under way in a bid to align its stretched supply profile to the new demand. Maroga also stressed that supply security could be markedly improved and space created for new connections if greater savings were achieved. In fact, he displayed a graph showing that Eskom's reserve margin, which was currently running at a paltry 6%, could rise to well above 10% by 2009 should its savings targets be met. "If we follow the 10% savings path, there will be space for new connections. But we need information from potential customers, which will tell us what is, in fact, possible," he said.

"In my personal opinion, most plants are unlikely to actually cut back because of profit factors. The smelters agreed to cut back mainly because of tight power and high power costs, but for some, supply is not much affected, only costs have gone up. But the cost of shutting down and restarting might be even higher than the increased power prices," a source from Shaanxi Tongchuan aluminum said July 11. A source from Chuangyuan aluminum said, "We also signed the agreement, but that's just a piece of paper; there is no definite ruling to say we must cut output. We have no plans to cut output at the moment or in the short term, but we may consider cutting back in the future." The Chuangyuan source also cited the power versus shutdown cost ratioand noted that in any case the company has its own power plant. "We don't expect many of the other smelters at the meeting to cut either, including Chalco ... everyone will wait and see," he said. "Domestic prices have risen slightly, but mainly affected by the rise on the LME yesterday - there seems to be little fundamental impact within China itself," an analyst from Beijing Antaike said July 11. "People are all very uncertain and maybe confused now since there are no definite details on what the cutbacks will be." A Chinese trader said domestic demand and trade activity were also expected to slow due to the Olympics, and those plants that actually shut may be able to restart in the fourth quarter, so the impact on domestic prices would be minimal.

As the company continues to expand in both established and emerging electronics manufacturing regions, the electronics group of Henkel announced a new partnership to extend its presence in South Africa, signing on PEM Technologies to represent its line of Loctite brand electronics adhesives in the growing South African region.Though it is not often considered a major electronics manufacturing locale, South Africa is, in fact, one of the fastest growing regions for certain sectors within the electronics production market. Automotive, military/aerospace and contract manufacturing are all seeing significant growth rates and Henkel anticipates that this will only continue for the foreseeable future.\n\n"Recently, we have seen major manufacturers in automotive and in military/aerospace either transfer production from Europe to South Africa or set up additional, dedicated South African production sites," comments Richard Boyle, Regional Technical Service Manager for Henkel. "And, growth in the contract manufacturing sector--particularly for telecom, IT and entertainment products--is even more rapid and represents the largest area of expansion for Henkel," Boyle continues. "Establishing a partnership with a strong regional distributor like PEM Technologies is critical to our strategy for growth in this promising region." Steve Eglinton, Managing Director of PEM, is confident the company's relationship with Henkel will only serve to further enable customers' competitiveness. "Without question, Loctite is the leading brand of adhesives for electronics manufacturing and we are very enthusiastic about \nrepresenting Henkel materials throughout South Africa," says Eglinton. "Henkel's philosophy of supporting the customer through top-notch applications expertise, technical service and materials-based productivity enhancing tools is completely in line with PEM's approach. With Henkel's leading materials technologies, we look forward to helping customer