Word: opm
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Dates: during 1941-1941
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Although 90% occupied with defense business, Revere Copper & Brass, copper fabricator, last week revealed that it had laid off 1,100 workers, 12% of its working force. It just could not get enough copper. Neither can the U.S.-OPM foresees a 770,000-ton (30%) gap between 1942 needs and supplies. Problem of the week was how to narrow this...
...Treasury's Procurement Division (buying for Lend-Lease) announced the signing of OPA-and OPM-approved contracts with three small high-cost Michigan mines (Quincy, Isle Royale, Copper Range) for all the copper they could dig-perhaps 20,000 tons a year. The deal: the mines were to get it above their "out-of-pocket" mine costs, about 15? or 16? (depending on the producer). The U.S. will still release the copper to fabricators at 12?, absorb the difference. Similar offers will doubtless soon be made to other high-cost mines (like Miami Copper's low-grade Castle...
...week, the latest import figures made it appear that he had also licked the other big Latin American copper problem: shipping space. Chile alone (counted on for 80% of U.S. copper imports) shipped 54,000 tons to the U.S. in August, more than twice last February's low. OPM now counts on Latin America for not more than 600,000 tons (⅓ of total U.S. supplies) for 1942. Only if Latin American copper exports can be increased over this figure-which is unlikely-will they reduce the expected U.S. shortage...
...Jobs 2 & 3, if successfully finished, would make these "vast quantities" look like peanuts. They were both under the supervision of Van Benschoten's boss, Ernest Tupper, OPM's tall, blond Coordinator of Industry & Commodity Research. Ernie Tupper is surveying 1) industry's inventories, and 2) those of the Army, Navy and Maritime Commission. By last week, his industry surveys (86,000 firms were questioned) were almost all in, but untabulated. They had already turned up some interesting preliminary unbalances: pulp and paper mills with ten months' supply of lead; 59 printing-machinery plants with nine...
Figures or no figures, Don Nelson last week formulated his allocation technique: 1) OPM's "end-products" industry sections are to huddle with their industry representatives, develop a "requirements program" for each industry; 2) the "end-products" sections are then to discuss their needs with the OPM raw materials branches involved, scale them down if necessary, but arrive at some minimum figure; 3) OPM's Industrial Conservation Bureau is to advise on possible simplification, substitution etc.; 4) SPAB is to get the finished program, send it to Priorities for actual allocation of materials...