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Hope for modest gains in copper, brass sales: many red metals producers and distributors believe the market has bottomed out. Optimism has grown in some sectors as demand slowly rises. (Red Metals Outlook 2003).

Article Excerpt
While it clearly won't be a boom year, North American red metal executives are hopeful that 2003 will show at least modest improvement.

Copper and brass distributors hope the market has bottomed out after successive quarters of weak sales. "The general feeling is that things will get better. They can't get much worse," says Franklin Brown, executive vice president of the Copper & Brass Servicenter Association. The trade group's recent member survey indicates that service center shipment volumes will increase during the first half for all nine major product categories of copper and copper alloys.

"Since mid-summer 2002, demand has increased gradually. Our numbers are not skyrocketing, but they are up," says distributor William Bohnen, president of Guardian Metal Sales Inc., Morton Grove, Ill.

The majority of Guardian's customers are optimistic, he adds. "I am positive that this will be an upside year. There will be a need to refill the supply pipeline once the economy starts coming back."

William Sabol, president of Detroit-based distributor Copper and Brass Sales, observes that while last year was very difficult overall, there was very slow but consistent across-the-board improvement throughout 2002, with only the telecommunications sector showing extreme weakness.

"I believe there will be slow, modest improvement in 2003, although cost control and careful attention to how you run your business will be a pre-requisite to being successful," he says.

North American copper and brass demand has slowly been improving for several months now, says Robin Bhar, metals analyst for Standard Bank, London. The industry went through a significant decline, about 10 percent, in...

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