Word: copperizing
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...news broke quietly on New Year's Eve. A wire-service report announced that Belgian-controlled Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, which annually mines 314,000 tons of copper in the Congo, was increasing the price of the metal from 380 a pound...
...Union sources in London, but the Union decision had been so sudden and quiet even within the company that executives, asked for corroboration over the weekend, denied any knowledge of it. The denial made no difference. Whether because it wished to re-emphasize its position as a pace-setting copper producer or because of some genteel arrangement whereby it drew the task of moving first, Union had decided on a price hike. Within two days, companies in two other large copper-producing countries, Chile (560,000 tons annually) and Zambia (750,000 tons annually) upped their price to 42? also...
...Much to Resist. Such turmoil and tortured fluctuations are the standard bill of fare for copper. Of the major metals, it has long had one of the most unstable world market prices. In 1956 that price hit an alltime high of 45⅞? a pound. By 1958 it had sunk to 24 4/5?. Speculation on copper futures ran amuck, and in desperation producers accounting for 70% of the free world's copper supply informally banded together to provide an artificial stability in the form of a set world price. Still copper's willful ways seemed uncontainable. A year...
...least one way, the raise made good old supply-and-demand economic sense: the simple fact is that the world requires more copper than is being mined. And as it has in many other fields (see U.S. BUSINESS), the Viet Nam war has been making additional demands on the already strained copper supply. The supply is also being threatened by strikes in Chile, the possibility that Rhodesia will cut off neighbor Zambia's supply routes and, as ever, the unsure state of Congo politics. Such a sellers' market was too much to resist for Chile, Zambia...
...Shell-Shocked." Companies like Anaconda and Kennecott, which both have giant mines in Chile, are not so happy about the increase. They remember that, in the volatile copper market of the past, exorbitant prices have driven buyers to find-and stay with-such substitutes as aluminum and plastics. And if the "fixed" 42? price is high, the uncontrolled price is even higher. The large companies, which set their own price, normally sell only to large and regular customers; smaller buyers must compete for the remaining 30% of the copper supply on commodity markets like the London Metal Exchange, where last...