World lead market

[6mm win lee]

Do any of you guys have an idea why lead has been doing the peak and valley thing in the last couple of months?

[runfiverun]

it's common for it to climb up at this time of year.
everybody makes their orders for the year and the price jumps.
it will settle back down in a couple of weeks, then spike again in late summer/early fall as the 'make-up' calls are placed.

[6mm win lee]

Thanks. Guess I need to take a deep breath and look at the long view.

[runfiverun]

about the only thing it has to do with our end is if we buy at the scrap yard they base their sales price on the spot price.
they don't get spot for their scrap and have to ship but they do get about 75% spot.
sometimes they say no to sales but if you re-approach them at near what they will get [minus shipping ] and if you buy like 1,000 lbs they will sometimes work with you.

[AlaskaScott]

Scrap dealers up here won't sell no matter what.

[John Boy]

Guess you failed to see it ... there is a lead market chart in a banner on the main page of Cast Boolits - just scroll to the top of any page

[TexasGrunt]

I feel lucky. One scrap yard close to my house sells lead. I picked up 140 lbs last week for $0.70 a lb. All pure soft scrap lead. I'd go get some more by SWMBO said I spent my allowance this month.

[wadcutter]

The short answer is that no one knows what metals are really worth anymore as there is so much speculation involved in setting the prices. It's been this way at least since the Chinese, and other emerging markets, exploded onto the manufacturing scene.

Because raw materials are essential to production, and yet don't contribute largely to the final product cost, people are willing to over bid to ensure they have a steady supply. For example, you might only use $1 of tin on the solder joints of a $800 iPhone. If you have to pay another 50 cents to ensure a steady supply of tin you will pay it.

Added to that is the fact is that the metal business can be pretty crooked (See Sumitomo copper affair, State Reserves copper scandal or Silver Thursday). If you own a few billion dollars in any commodity, there is quite an incentive to make the price rise and often that involves less than honest behavior.

Actually this year, it's been relatively steady. From 08 to 2010 it drop about 75% and then went doubled in the course of a couple years.

[TexasGrunt]

More like $0.05 worth of tin in a iPhone.

[runfiverun]

part of the jump is because the dollar dropped again.
about 15 cents of the jump was orders the other 5 cents is dollar drop.
some of the rises in price isn't even a rise in price it's our money becoming worth less.

[wadcutter]

More like $0.05 worth of tin in a iPhone.

Well it's true not much tin ends up on the board, but screen printing is pretty inefficient. In our factory we estimate 96% of solder paste is wasted in the screen printing process. So while an iPhone might only contain 1/4 gram of tin (a wild guess), worth about 2 cents, the tin usage per board is 25x that. I have to do this math frequently for environmental regulatory reasons. It's the worse part of my job (the best part is free tin). I imagine anyone who isn't in electronics manufacturing fell asleep half way through that paragraph.

[runfiverun]

nope.
I used to tag onto a large order of wiping solder to get my tin bars a whole lot cheaper.
the company would order like 2 tons of the stuff and get a really big discount.
I'd toss on a 20-30 lb tag on order and get their price break.
nice 10lb bars of 99.9% pure stuff for like 5-6 bucks a pound.
I wish my buddy still worked there.

[TexasGrunt]

Well it's true not much tin ends up on the board, but screen printing is pretty inefficient. In our factory we estimate 96% of solder paste is wasted in the screen printing process. So while an iPhone might only contain 1/4 gram of tin (a wild guess), worth about 2 cents, the tin usage per board is 25x that. I have to do this math frequently for environmental regulatory reasons. It's the worse part of my job (the best part is free tin). I imagine anyone who isn't in electronics manufacturing fell asleep half way through that paragraph.

That metal can't be recovered and used?

If not I've got a son-in-law that works for a chip maker......