Education
- Copper Production
- Copper Facts
- History of Copper
- 60 Centuries of Copper
- Introduction
- The Raw Material
- The Original Sources of Supply
- The Name "Copper"
- The Spanish Mines
- Other Roman Sources of Supply
- The Beginnings of Bronze
- Early Copper Mining in Britain
- Early Smelting Practice
- Mediaeval Sources of English Copper
- The Peak Years of British Copper Mining
- Older Sources of the Metal Abroad
- The Great American Expansion of Copper Mining
- Copper in Ancient Times
- Copper and Bronze in Ancient Greece and Rome
- Copper in the Middle Ages
- Monumental Brasses
- The Mediaeval Bell-founders
- Mediaeval Ordnance
- Brass Wire
- The Pin Trade
- Stained Glass Windows
- Tudor Weights and Measures
- The Great Mediaeval Bronze Doors
- Grilles, Gates, Tombs and Statues
- Weather-Vanes
- Enamelling
- China and Japan in the Middle Ages
- Copper in the Pre-Columbian Civilizations of America
- Early Bronze Casting in West Africa
- The Industrial Age
- The Welsh Process
- Growth of the Brass Trades
- Some More About Pins
- Invention of the Stamping Press
- The Great Inventor-Craftsmen
- Josiah Wedgwood
- Bolsover and Sheffield Plate
- Navigational Instruments
- Brass Clocks and Watches
- Copper Engraving Plates
- Architecture and the Fine Arts
- Development of the Copper Coinage
- The Old Horse-Brasses
- Copper and Brass in Ships
- Copper in Electrical Engineering
- Franklin's Lightning Conductor
- Cavendish
- The Voltaic Pile and its Consequences
- Faraday's Famous Ten Days
- The Widening Field
- The Development of the Dynamo
- The Electric Telegraph
- The First Submarine Cables
- The Atlantic Cable
- Electricity Generation and Supply
- Cadmium Copper
- The Telephone
- Electric Lighting
- Radio and Radar
- Copper in Modern Times
- Introduction
- Copper in the USA
- 60 Centuries of Copper
- The Statue of Liberty
- Copper & Kids
Copper in the USA: Bright Future Glorious Past
US Companies
were purchased by oil companies in the 1970s. A string of unprofitable years in the early 1980s led the oil companies (except one) to divest their copper subsidiaries. This, along with expanding international competition, led management of the again independent copper producers to bring new hydrometallurgy technology on stream, institute other production efficiencies and tighten other cost controls in a revitalization program that was perhaps unprecedented in US industry.
Today the US copper companies, despite the high cost of the world’s strictest environmental standards, are well positioned to live with low price levels and to profit from improvements in the demand for copper.
Restructuring of the US brass mill industry in the past few years has been at east as profound. The same economic factors at work in recent years in the mining industry squeezed the profit margins of brass mills, which had been dominated by large full-line mills producing a wide range of products including strip, sheet, plate, rod, bar, forgings, mechanical wire, and tubing. Today there is only one full-line mill as compared to eight in 1970.
What has emerged are largely single-product operations, most with up-to-date production equipment, able to complete on a worldwide scale. Many older mills have been closed and other companies restructured through leveraged buyouts and employee stock ownership plans.
The wire and cable mills have seen some restructuring, particularly in the breakup of some of the large, multi-product operations with former equity ties to mining companies, and also through numerous mergers and buyouts. Overall, however, these changes have not been so profound as in the case of the copper companies and brass mills.
In contrast to other metal industries there exists today almost no top-to-bottom integration of the US copper industry. The only move toward integration in the last 20 years has been the addition of continuous cast wire rod mills to the end of the production process by several refining companies.
Highlights
History of Copper in the USA
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