Alcan Aluminum Ltd., Montreal, says there is room for improvement in the UBC recycling rate in the United Kingdom. The company, which operates a can recycling facility in Warrington, England in the U.K., says only about 34% of UBCs are recycled in that nation, well behind the 65% or better rate the U.S. now claims. In a Reuters item, Alcan’s Joan Chesney predicts the U.K.’s recycling rate will climb to 50% by the year 2001, but it will take an improvement in the recycling infrastructure. “We need to make it ever more accessible to the public,” she says of UBC recycling. “We have our own infrastructure and we have the potential for further volume to come.”
SLOW GROWTH IN CANNING SEEN
An optimist would call it stable, while a pessimist might call it stagnant. That is one way to summarize the 0.6% annual growth foreseen for metal can shipments in the U.S. projected in a recent study. The Freedonia Group, Cleveland, sees nonalcoholic beverages remaining the largest canning segment in the year 2002. The recyclability of cans—both aluminum and tin-plated steel cans—is seen as a competitive advantage by the study’s authors.
DEMAND REMAINS STRONG FOR MILL PRODUCTS
Shipments to domestic markets have kept demand for aluminum mill products strong in the U.S. Figures for March compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce show even exports increased in that month compared to a year earlier. (Total exports for the first three months of 1998 compared to 1997 were still down some 19,500 tons, however.) Shipments of mill products to domestic manufacturers increased by 85,000 tons in the first quarter of 1998 compared to the first quarter of 1997.
ANALYST REFUTES GOLD NAY-SAYERS
Is gold losing its luster in its centuries-old role as the most reliable of assets in troubled times? Some analysts have ventured this opinion, but that judgment is far from unanimous. In its recommendation of Newmont Mining Corp., Denver, Colo., analysts from CIBC Oppenheimer, New York, offered their opinion. “Many view gold’s slide as the beginning of its demise and the end of a multi-thousand-year role as a real asset; however, we prefer to view it as simply suffering temporary ill effects,” CIBC Oppenheimer analysts Thomas M. McNamara and Michael McTighe write. “We believe that the gold market has turned and that its fundamentals are strengthening.” The analysts recommend Newmont due to exploration opportunities unique to the firm, but also feel that a gold price hike is likely. “CIBC’s global gold price estimate is $340 per ounce for both this year and next,” they write.
SILVER “UP IN THE AIR”
“Not since the speculative activity of 1979-80 has the outlook for the silver market been so up in the air.” That’s what the Silver Users Association, Washington, D.C., says in its forecast for where the price of silver might head as the year progresses. What is clear is that inventory stocks are declining, which in theory should help prices move back up.
According to the Silver Institute, Washington, D.C., “robust silver demand exceeded supply from mine production and the recycling of scrap by 198 million ounces in 1997.” Last year marked the ninth consecutive year that conventional supply failed to keep pace with fabrication demand, according to the Institute.
The Silver Institute estimates that identifiable bullion silver stocks have been reduced from more than 1.2 billion ounces in 1990 to less than 600 million ounces at the end of 1997. The drawdown in inventories has occurred despite increases in mine output and silver recycling. The fastest-growing consumer of silver has been the industrial sector.