I was reading this article with interest: I was amazed to learn that we send our silver bearing lead all the way to the UK for refining. That seems bloody ridiculous. http://www.australianminesatlas.gov.au/education/fact_sheets/silver.jsp
There was a report on Deutsche Welle about how the Germans import electro waste and various bits and pieces to get silver from it... has obviously become significantly more profitable recently. When the report was done the guy said they need to get around around 1 kilo of silver per tonne out of the trash to make it worth while (if I remember rightly). They had these huge drums full of silver dust when they were finished - each with a few tonnes of pure silver dust in them - not a bad day's work.
Happy to allow lead industries and other heavy metal processes to be done far far away from me thanks.
Dont worry mate, if they do it here they will pay tax I know what you mean, but i also know what they mean.
And there you have it folks. Australia does not process anything (in comparison to what we dig out), what we do ... and what annoys me is that Australia simply digs dirt out of the ground ships it, pays for processing and then gets back the raw materials. If it wasnt for our (*thank god*) valuable dirt we would be absolutely f#%ked. Australia has one of the most riches sources of rare earths (which may eventually be one of the most important materials) and we send it all the way to malaysia to process and get it back. Reason being is that the process of getting dirt turned into gold, silver, rare earths .. whatever is more then just digging, the refining process is where the technical skills are required and australia doesnt have much of that. Many people have asked, if australia is such a core countries in producing metals why dont we just make a killing and up the prices.... answer is very simple. If australia could mine the steel, silver, gold process it ourselves or turn it into the end product we would be laughing, but since we cant korea, china and other countries who produce simply say fine ... raise the cost of steel ill raise the cost of the cars i sell to you 5 fold ... One of the core reasons why i think australia could be screwed in future is that some how we missed the industrial revolution, we somehow went from farming straight to a services/management economy. Thats also why we never developed the skills to refine our own dirt and why we need to send it halfway around the world to get back the end product that we need. If australia managed to industrialise things would be very different.
I agree that its disappointing that we don't "make" here in aus. I'm not so sure it's because we can't. It is just plain cheaper to send it over there instead of doing it here. It makes "commercial" sense.
I was watching an Alex Jones clip just yesterday and he broached this very topic. He was coming from a globalist perspective but his one word description of this phenomenon-mercantilism. A great control mechanism for the sheep who are shorn, have their wool removed to a (captive) cheap labour destination, and then have the privilege of buying it back as nice wooly jumpers. Note that the cheap labour must not be able to remove their labour elsewhere. AJ's point was regarding the captive Egyptian labour market which has been such since the time of the Pharoahs. Meanwhile the vast percentage of the profits are earned and retained offshore. My contempt of our political class grows daily. Mark.
Yet anytime someone mentions the immorality of industry born through rentier capitalism, we're shouted back down into our holes? I agree what you are saying here pmstacker. This strikes at the heart of my ideology and rubs a very raw itch with me. We are NOT an industrious nation born or labour and industry, we are sitting on our fat arses and selling off the assets for profit, or extorting others to use it and rest assured, there will come a point where that cannot work anymore and we are well and truly screwed! I think there's an amazing opportunity here for an independent mint who will refine and mint copper/silver/gold to the masses, but for some reason it hasn't happened yet. Whilst I appreciate what the Perth Mint do and the quality of their stock is undeniable, there's no doubt there's a very strong premium that can be claimed with such a monopoly market and increasing demand. If I had the means, I'd personally love to set up a mint to compete and offer product that's not legal tender (just generic silver/gold/copper rounds and bars), such that it could be priced more competitively with unlimited mintage. Australia desparately needs the likes of APMEX or QSB on our shores to create a more competitive market I believe. Considering our output of raw materials here, I honestly cannot understand why we still pay some of the highest prices in the world for our refined precious metals. But THAT is the sort of moral industry I am talking about. Not this flipping houses to the next sucker bullshit, but REAL industry that sustainable and providing real value for profit. Until we can get back to the idea of market competition based on merit, rather than captive markets, monopolies and extortionist ideology, we are never going to be able to stand competitively on our own feet.
Mate, and after all these years we still havnt learnt ! We have a great educational system here compared with may parts of the world, we can still go to school and have government cover our fees till we make money, yet get great engineers coming out yet because australia like to off shore everything, regardless of being IT, or any other engineering we of shore it, can you imagine what will happen when the currently *cheap* labour force in emerging economies such as china, india, indonesia and phillipines starts to be the dominate economies ? We would be absolutely f*&ked, we would have no inhouse skills and the once cheap off shore labour would no longer be cheap ! We do it to ourselves, most of my mates that are still single have gone overseas cause opportunities are better there, skills that we have built are not as well regarded as it is overseas and its the fault of the government and its policies. And the reason we dont do these things like refining is simply true, its "cause we cant" Firstly the technical skills dont exist here and the labour is expensive, the latter can be addressed but the fact we dont have the technical skills is a shame really. All australia does is dig holes all over the ground and export the dirt and farming. Just look at how the weather effected the dollar when it hit queensland and how it affected the crops. One of the big things what may be an investment opportunity in future are things like rare earths, other then china australia has massive deposits and simply cause we cant process the raw ore we ship it to malaysia or to other parts of the world while in the meantime china has accumilated decades of skills to learn how to actually process the rare earth ore that they dig out so they can monopolize the market. I guess we can thank god we are a commodities country and mother nature for the most part is good to us and our soil cause otherwise we would be very much worse of .. i swear this sort of stuff annoys the hell out of me ... sorry for the morning rant
There's a proposal that's done the rounds a few times whereby we build two large steel mills, one near iron ore deposits in WA, the other near coal deposits in the Bowen basin. Build a train line between and move iron ore from west to east and coal from east to west. State of the art steel mills could be bought as turn-key projects. Turning iron ore to iron is not technically challenging. The main question is "what is the labour cost component of steel?". Is it 0.1 hours per tonne, 1 hour per tonne or 10 hours per tonne? Further, excess labour costs can be partially offset by lower transport costs for iron/steel compared to iron ore and coal. Anyway, why do we cleave to the notion that tarrifs are always and forever bad. Our big swinging dick trading partners are quite happy to impose them on us. I'll try to find out the labour component of steel today sometime, time permitting. Mark.
I'm one of the most outspoken 'ranters' on this forum, absolutely no need to apologise for venting because it's true. But this assumption that mining and selling minerals will carry us come what may I think is a very naive way of thinking. Just look back to 2008 and the government of the day absolutely crapped itself in blowing billions on propping up the economy. You throw in another major downturn in the international markets, combined with a large increase in energy costs to mine (oil spike anyone?), a sharp pullback in developing economies (China putting on the brakes) and what the hell are we going to do then? We can't keep flipping houses to international buyers, they already think we're insane on that front. So what, the retail and tourism sector will cover us? We ARE screwed and it won't be too difficult to realise that when the next major downturn hits. There's turmoil all over the planet at the moment and there's only so many bandaids they can apply as QE3, QE4, QE5 etc gets rolled out to try and hide the corruption in the world reserve. It's coming for sure and only an absolute fool would laugh it off as not a concern, or place their 'faith' in the government to keep bailing them out.
If the likes of BHP / RIO could turn a buck turning it to ingots here then they would. I have a friend who works in metals recycling. They perform seperation and bundling work here, but reprocessing is done overseas because of the worker cost, very strict environmental and works safety laws in this country. Saying that Australia "can't" do it is a bit silly. Here is an article about shipping lead dirt, issues to do with lead-air contamination and possibility of refining here into ingots to avoit environmental issues. http://www.miningweekly.com/article...lan-mine-as-wa-lifts-transport-ban-2011-02-23
Yeh ill look it up to, quite interested on the steel processing from iron ore. I think i generalised abit there in terms of difficulties but i was mainly referring to mount weld where they have the new rare earths which could be the next big thing and things like cars where we ship of to korea to make hyundais for us. I think the labour costs would be more expensive here but you gotta look at the big picture. Sometimes you need abit of pain now to prosper later, it just depends on when you wanna feel that pain. Also there are two main things i have been thinking. Right now the australia property market value is so high its amazing. If you think logically and say, how would government keep prices up there are four things i can think of , if there are others please add cause this is just my own personal opinion after thinking things through on the train on the way to work 1. Increase base salaries so that average income earner is 100K, how i dont know but thats 1 2. Increase first home buyers to 60K maybe 3. Start bulding further inland and make it unnecessary for people to need to commute to the major cities 4. Open up the housing market *completly* to overseas buyers no holds barred Number 1,2 and 3 seem like they cant happen in the near future by policy change, number 4 however can so if they choose this as the solution you can bet your bottom dollar that the eastern seaboard of australia will automatically become property of singaporeans, chinese , the wealthy indonesians and others wealthy enough to buy and invest here. This would drive prices higher keep the status quo for current home owners but will completely price out the majority of the people here. (btw im myself not australian but have lived her for most of my life and love this country for what its given me in terms of education etc so no racism intended with the three countries i mentioned above (just that they are the most likely buyers), i actually am from one of those countries above ) If this is going to happen to keep an old and over priced segment alive why not bring in cheap labour from these countries (cause they do exist) to work the steel mills ? There would be many people from these countries who would be willing to work here in australia cause its alot better then from their old life (possibly not singapore but the other two) and that way we can create our own processing plants for which we have the skills for and no longer need to ship dirt to other countries for processing. Instead of spending tax payer money on first home owners grants it can be spent on housing or for immigration policies to bring in cheap labour to work the mines here in australia would be better for everyone. Cause if you think about the choice its as follows, allow foreign buyers with lots of money to snap up property here in australia, leave them empty and price out the local people, use tax payer money for more grants OR invest in mills, mines , immigration and processing plants, give jobs to immigrants with slightly cheaper labour costs and build up the capability here, there by in the long term no more shipping of shore, profits stay here...
In a manner of speaking. Chinese corporations are buying up all our mines. And that is a national travesty if you ask me !
