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After a boom last year, the US copper alloy market is now patchier, but optimism still generally prevails, says Myra Pinkham.
The North American copper and brass market has been somewhat baffling ever since the fourth quarter of last year, when after a very strong year for most of 2004, demand seemed to stagnate and even drop, seemingly as the entire supply chain took a breather and worked down inventories that had accumulated.
The jury, however, is still out on whether demand has started to pick up again. Some companies, particularly service centres, have reported an uptick of orders, but in general that strength has not seemed to filter down to the brass mills, many of which were still reporting soft order books, shorter lead times and more metal in stock, despite generally strong market fundamentals.
"Demand has been real slow. It has been a lot less this year than we had anticipated," laments Tom Funkhauser, vice-president and general manager of the Eminence, Kentucky, business unit of Hussey Copper. There is generally a seasonal pickup in demand in the first quarter of the year.
Donald M Commerford Jr, senior vp of Revere Copper Products, Rome, New York, also notes that demand was down for the first months of this year compared with the same period last year. "Fm concerned - we expected that the first quarter would be stronger than it was."
But copper and brass service centres seem to be seeing more demand than their mill suppliers. "Demand has been good but not fabulous," says William Sabol, president of the copper and brass sales unit of ThyssenKrupp Materials, Southfield, Michigan. "While they certainly haven't been at as exceedingly high levels as last year, after a slowing in the fourth quarter business began to pickup again in the last half of March and into April," he says.
Some distributors, such as Richard Farmer, co-president of Farmers Copper, Galveston, Texas, say they never saw a downturn at all. "Sales volume and phone volume has been pretty steady," he says. Likewise Steven Buzash Jr, president of Standard Metals, Hartford, Connecticut, asserts: "Demand has been phenomenal, unbelievable. It is up about 10% from last year and last year was up 15-18% over the year before. The...