OT: Cost of Copper

I awarded a contract for a power feed last week and today the electrician told me that he had to raise his bid. It seems that the price of copper has gone up about 30% over the last few days. I checked on the price of wire before allowing a change order, and he's not lying. Ouch! This is going to blow what was an on budget project.

So heads up all, copper is on a rocket to the moon.

I saw in the local news where thugs were stealing the copper out of HVAC systems for scrap. Gold is way up too.

And scrap steel is not as cheap as it was!

I saw on a news channel that it costs 1.3 to 1.4 cents to make a penny at the latest prices of copper.

One of the reasons Australia has so many jobs right now - there's a big resources boom due to the growth of China. The rate of development there is fuelling huge demand for raw materials like copper. It's expected to carry on like this some time yet as well.

Every so often we have enough copper at work that we take it to the scrapyard to sell. The proceeds go into a fund for department lunches. Last time we did this, which was about 2 months ago, I was completely blown away at the price of copper. #1 copper was bringing $1.78 lb. Even the small stuff that hasn't been stripped was bringing 80 cents/lb. A very average pickup truck load netted $1400.

#1 copper is $3.17 as of Friday of last week, it has doubled in the last two months.

All contracts involving metal components are currently being bid with the price valid for 10 days only.

And to think I left several hundreds of pounds of copper on my farm in Missouri when I left for Georgia.

I hope my company doesnt find out about this. They currently let me have all the old wire, HSS, and carbide. I sold 85lbs of carbide at $6/lb a month ago. Havent checked new prices.

Dont feel bad Alaric!!

I'm in the same boat but on the opposite side. We were just awarded a contract to fab and install a large Chrome plating line of which I submitted the bid 5 months ago.

The chrome rectifier on this particular project is a 20,000 amp rectifier which for those of you who may not know consists of 20 ea. 1/4" x 4" copper buss bars for the cathodic hook-up and 20 ea. of the same 1/4" x 4" copper buss for the anodic hook-ups. The rectifier will be mounted about 10' from the actual plating tank (as will the others on this project) so that equals approx. 28 ft. +/- copper buss per bar.

28 ft. x 40 ea. copper buss bars x 3.88 lbs. per ft = 4346 lbs. just for the chrome tank

I quoted this project at $1.32 per lb. 5 months ago and now my price is a little under $3.00 (I buy in big quantities).

The total cost of this project, including all metals (copper buss, copper wire, steel and stainless steel for the tanks, etc.) increased the cost of this project to over $125,000.00.

The owners damned near fainted but fortunately the clause in our quote "price is good for only 30 days" saved our "bacon".

I also will be changing any future quote to "good for only 10 days" in any of our future quotes.

Regards,
Chris

Aluminim prices have doubled too!!

we do interior design, 1 M.T of aluminum was 3800$ three weeks back, and now its about 4700$$ per M.T here in dubai..and the raw material suplier has warned us that the prices are going up next month too....there should be a reason behind all this!1

sheesh.K

It's all running out! Metal, oil! Soon, all we will have left is dirt!

Can anybody recommend a PLC with it's central processor designed around morel mushrooms (the ones that look like brains). And I need a fuzzy logic module - got some tea leaves?

TM

Have you priced Morel mushrooms per pound? $26 a pound. Yowzers. Aged Black Angus tenderloin seems cheap now.

deja vu all over again ...

stay tuned ...

My cable supplier keeps me informed every week about copper prices. I have graphs here going back to November 2005.

Copper was at just less than $3900 AU per tonne in October 2005 and the latest graph shows it at just under $9000 AU per tonne on 13/5/2006. The word her is that it is expected to continue the upward spiral.

Increases on small flexible cables for use in control panels (up to 10 sq mm) have jumped 6.5%, 12%, 20%, 12% etc etc and just keep going.

The larger the cable the higher the copper content and the greater the increase.

Several suppliers have now placed cable on a day to day basis. It is very hard to even get a supplier to commit to holding the price for a week when quoting for supply.

PETROL IS CHEAP BY COMPARISON!!!!