Copper prices going up up and up again

[Gavin John Hyde]

Went to scrap yard today, had a large sack, just shy of 20KG of stripped copper cables.
Was shocked when he said £6 per KG... nice Brucy bonus for me there...

Copper has gone up again after a little fall. from a job point of view it means the price of cables is going to go up even further.
Did some research this evening and the markets are forecasting copper to reach around 18000-20,000USD$ per tonne within 18 months as there is a global shortage and lack of active mines. it is currently 9312 dollars
Point of the post though is does there come a point soon where we start using aluminium cables? it would mean larger CSA for the corresponding same circuit if wired in copper cables. ie unless mistaken 4mm/2.5mm instead of 2.5/1.5 for twin and earth.

What do you all think? I could easily see on large jobs the designers specifying aluminium cables rather than copper, especially on large stuff with larger csa such as factories etc...

For smaller jobs its a case of passing the price on to the customer. I do think it wont be long before everything copper that is readily accessible will be stolen by the scallies.

 

[mattg4321]

Aluminium is a pain to work with as it needs specific terminals etc. Not practical unless it’s something that’s been thought through beforehand and the savings are large.

The forecasts are only a guess. Who knows where copper will go tomorrow let alone next year. If it was that nailed on prices would keep going up then everyone would be piling into copper stocks/shares and the price would be up already!

Prices rose similarly to this in 07/08 then settled down a bit.

 

[Dustydazzler]

I called it a while ago but it won't be long before 100m drum of 2.5 t&e hits £100 inc vat

 

[Lucien Nunes]

Make hay while the sun shines. There is going to be the mother of all price slumps when my wireless power transmission scheme (pat. pending) goes live.

Cheers
Nik T.

 

[freddo]

Aluminium won't be used for smaller cables again, it is a nightmare. It's fragile and is difficult to install correctly. OK for larger cables especially as it's so light compared to copper. Last time I took some in the bloke said there was serious shortages of copper.

 

[Dustydazzler]

Not sure if this is nationwide but my local wholesalers is limiting how much cable you can buy in 1 transaction

 

[ruston]

Probably keeping it so he can warm your legs when he has a good stock.

 

[Gavin John Hyde]

Not sure if this is nationwide but my local wholesalers is limiting how much cable you can buy in 1 transaction

Doesn't want to sell it to you today at current price, wants to wait next week when he can charge an extra tenner a roll!

 

[Gavin John Hyde]

Make hay while the sun shines. There is going to be the mother of all price slumps when my wireless power transmission scheme (pat. pending) goes live.

Cheers
Nik T.

I read somewhere that BT aim to eventually have a wireless telecoms/data network and could be sitting on billions of copper in the network if removed and melted.

 

[Dustydazzler]

Doesn't want to sell it to you today at current price, wants to wait next week when he can charge an extra tenner a roll!

I picked up 3 rolls of 2.5 which is easily enough to last me a good few months based on what work I have lined up, only paid £77 inc vat per 100m for prysmain which isnt too bad

I used to buy loads of cable when prices were low but I just don't do enough rewiring now to warrant carrying a grands worth of cable anymore

It it his £100 a drum then just pass it on to the customers at the end of the day

 

[Mikegh]

I read somewhere that BT aim to eventually have a wireless telecoms/data network and could be sitting on billions of copper in the network if removed and melted.

Probably cost billions to remove and melt it

 

[Strima]

I read somewhere that BT aim to eventually have a wireless telecoms/data network and could be sitting on billions of copper in the network if removed and melted.

They're moving to fibre optic. The copper that's been in the ground, some of it for at least 80 years is getting very brittle and starting to fail. Every exchange has decommissioned frames that have several thousand pairs of cables just sat there gathering dust, probably not financially viable to recover them at the minute.

This is just one rack of three in one exchange I saw and not even in the main frame room. That's roughly 8000 cables per suiteline.

 

[DefyG]

Might get beaten to it !!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2045414/Newton-Trent-plunged-darkness-thieves-steal-electrical-cables.html

 

[Mikegh]

Metal theft causes probably 1000x the scrap value in economic and other damage