Word: tungsten
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...will likely buy Indonesian rubber. Goodyear is negotiating to return. Its first task if it does: to restore efficiency at the Bogor plant, where tire output is off two-thirds since U.S. managers were kicked out. Union Carbide hopes to reclaim its battery plant, may also start tungsten mining. Caltex, which recently signed a five-year $50 million contract to supply the Indonesian government with lubricating oils and grease, has set aside $10 million to open a new oil field in addition to its present 310,000 barrels-a-day operation; it will also construct additional pier facilities for tankers...
...aggravated by strikes in the U.S., Zambia and Chile, the world's three major copper-producing countries. At the same time, supplies of other nonferrous metals are tightening, and prices are rising. In the last 18 months, tin has gone from $1.22 to $1.75 per lb., tungsten from $1.40 to $2.03, vanadium from $2.45 to $3.40. Mercury is so short that badmen in the Southwest, aping the Atlanta copper capers, have in the last four months stolen an estimated $70,000 worth of mercury from unattended gas-well meters...
...well ahead of supply as a result of continuing economic expansion. Aside from copper, the pinch is tightest in the strengthening and rust-resisting metals used to make alloy steels. Detroit is consuming more chrome steel for trim. A surge in orders for machine tools has boosted demand for tungsten steel used in cutting edges. Molybdenum, one of the prime hardening metals, is so scarce that steelmakers frequently are forced to buy on a grey market, where they pay speculators double or triple the going price of $2.04 a lb. Even so, most smaller companies that specialize in alloy steels...
Homestake not only reopened but also prospered by introducing cost-cutting technical innovations. Among them: automated hoisting equipment; TV monitoring and short-wave communications; tungsten carbide bits, used to drill holes for explosives, that last for 450 ft. of drilling v. 16 in. for the old steel bits, and have doubled each miner's productivity. It takes an average three tons of ore to produce a single ounce of gold, but Homestake literally wrings out every ounce. The company salvages $300,000 worth of gold a year by such thrifty measures as washing workers' clothes and hands, vacuuming...
More Fingers. Grace, which also produces oil, paper, tungsten and tin, is not certain in which.direction it will expand next, but it is currently spending $17 million annually in research to find out. Says Peter Grace, who mixes his metaphors as successfully as he does his chemicals: "The more fingers we have -the more strings to our bow-the faster we accelerate. As we get bigger, we have more money to build more plants, and more possibilities open...