Opportunities in North America's Copper Market
By Emil W. Milker
Manager, Market Intelligence
Copper Development Association Inc.
Presented to International Copper Study Group on Spring 2002 Meeting in Santiago, Chile
March 22, 2002
This paper examines opportunities and threats facing the North American copper market, focusing on the top six markets, which combined account for almost two-thirds of consumption.
Over the past eleven years North American copper consumption has increased by almost one million tonnes, from 3,438,000 tonnes in 1990 to 4,417,000 in 2000. North America consumes 24 percent of the world's copper, with the United States accounting for 21½ percent of copper consumption and Mexico and Canada 1.4 and 1.2 percent respectively.
Building Wire
Building wiring, the largest market, accounted for 16.8 percent of consumption in 2000. This translates into over 740,000 tonnes of copper. Copper is the material of choice, by far in the building wiring market with a 92 percent share in 2000. Copper's dominance in this market is a testimony to its many strengths. Copper, by virtue of its inherent high conductivity, ductility and strength, has always been the ideal material for conducting electricity.
Copper building wire has benefited from the increase in residential energy consumption. Let's take the U.S. market as an example. In the 1950s US residences consumed 113 billion kWh in an average year, by the 1990s consumption was nearly nine times as much. On an index basis that's an increase from 100 to 889 for that 40-year period. Even when factoring the growth in the number of homes over this period of time, consumption of electricity still quadrupled. But homes in the 1950s didn't have all the electrical apparatuses that they do today. And yet the average home today in the US doesn't have four times as much current-carrying capacity as the typical home in the 1950s. One can therefore make the argument that home wiring hasn't kept pace with demand.
No comments:
Post a Comment