Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[XenaLives]

OMG followers - someone just printed some excellent resources on the Yahoo board and they will soon be buried in crap so I want to repost them here:

http://www.thecdi.com/index2.html

http://www.omgi.com/rd/published_papers.htm

One of the original Yahoo posts:
http://post.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?action=0&board=7079237&tid=omp&sid=7079237&mid=88....


An excerpt from the first site:
http://www.thecdi.com/october2002/article3_future


Over the past year, the big players in cobalt, OMG and Umicore have got bigger. Both companies have secured supplies and markets through joint ventures and acquisitions and collectively account for over 40% of cobalt demand and the supply of added value products.

Umicore has purchased Hall Chemicals which in 1988 was purchasing over 1000 tonnes of cobalt a year; through its trading subsidiary Sogem, it has a joint venture with Norimet to sell Norilsk cobalt. Macquarie Research has recently estimated that Norilsk has been producing around 5,000 tonnes of cobalt per annum for each of the past two years.

OMG purchased the Cawse assets which secured around 1000 tonnes of cobalt plus nickel in intermediate form; OMG has also purchased the previous Manchem carboxylate plant from Rhodia which was using around 400 tonnes of metal a few years ago.


If there is going to be a supply problem, these two companies are in good shape to weather the storm. A relatively small rise in the price will make intermediates more plentiful and enable both companies to fully utilise their refining assets. Being integrated into high value added products will also enable them to benefit from the greater margins.For other consumers, it looks as though they have to be price followers unless they can organise joint venture agreements and guaranteed off-take arrangements with new suppliers.


In view of the importance of this company and their product, how can the INSTY's possibly stay out of it?