Carbon price up by 66%

[mossy]

I read this week that the three main raw material manufacturers were (or had) raised prices by 66%
Anyone else read it or knows about it?

Could have an effect on bike prices!!

 

[downfader]

I read this week that the three main raw material manufacturers were (or had) raised prices by 66%
Anyone else read it or knows about it?

Could have an effect on bike prices!!

If thats the case it most probably will. However you might find the bigger companies might get away with putting on cheaper groupsets to keep costs down so it wont be as noticable. Its the smaller frame manufaturers that will raise their prices the most. I doubt it will mean an £1500 Scott R3 will end up at £2.1k or more

 

[Peter10]

Same thing happened with the raw ingredients for anti-freeze a few years back. China bought & held onto the raw materials for their own use and pushed up the prices by almost 100%.

 

[Globalti]

Funny that. In my industry we are suffering a desperate shortage of key raw materials because China has enough demand for them domestically and therefore no need to export them. The last 2 years have been the toughest we have experienced in 49 years of business, thanks almost entirely to China.

 

[Jezston]

I've heard this about a lot of materials that various industries have become dependent on cheaply from china, which china now pretty much have exclusivity on the production of.

I recall reading about some obscure mineral that pretty much all electronic circuits depend on on being mined in China, and if China wanted to they could totally screw over the world's electronics manufacturers. And that, apparently, is exactly what they are beginning to do.

Say what you want about the actions of nations like the US and UK and their ramifications internationally - you wait until China start REALLY flexing their muscles. The US might try spinning stuff to make themselves look like the good guy, but China simply do NOT give a sh*t. Look at Africa - Darfur for example. What's that? Our business partners going around commiting acts of genocide? World up in arms? So what?

 

[Globalti]

China has been meddling in Africa for decades so as to secure her raw materials; typically China will carry out infrastructure projects at cost or very cheap in return for a control of the goodies. Africans call the Chinese the new colonialists; they are everywhere but very discrete. I have two or three customers in Nigeria who are actually Chinese factories fronted by Lebanese. You always know when you walk past the Accounts office and glance in to see a Chinese woman accountant quietly working away.

The theory I've heard on Darfur is that China wants to control Sudan's oil resources so it's in China's interest that other nations, especially the US, continue to boycott Sudan. For that reason Sudan needs to look like the "bad boy" of Africa so a few AKs distributed to the dominant Arab tribesmen help to keep those southerners in control and any foreigners out.

 

[Will1985]

Tantalum was the electronics element IIRC - had a lecturer in my masters who specialised in things which China has come to monopolise...

I suspect Boeing may be the other big carbon fibre consumer

 

[ASC1951]

I recall reading about some obscure mineral that pretty much all electronic circuits depend on on being mined in China, and if China wanted to they could totally screw over the world's electronics manufacturers. And that, apparently, is exactly what they are beginning to do.

That has been an investment scare story ever since journalists managed to spell neodymium. http://www.naturalne...nts_mining.html The reality is that China has cheap deposits of many of these minerals, so no-one bothered looking elsewhere. For instance, rutile (the titanium ore, and one of the commonest ores on Earth) is often found with very low concentrations of several rare earth minerals, which at the moment are thrown away by most western miners.

Given that Europe and the US pillaged the rest of the world from 1750 to 1950, then expected the Chinese to produce all our cheap consumer goods and live at 5% of our annual consumption, I don't think we are exactly on the moral high ground when they say "Hang on, we want some of the goodies too."

 

[Globalti]

....not to mention tea and opium and the murky and deceitful history of British trade with China for several hundred years....

 

[RecordAceFromNew]

Indeed it is all too easy to demonise foreigners. This article in the latest Economist paints a somewhat more balanced background to suggestions above regarding the rare earth mineral issue. Their extraction is dangerous, requiring highly toxic chemicals, with potentially terrible environmental consequences; it seems their production now concentrates in China only because western miners gave up extraction in their mines.

 

[zimzum42]

Just because we (European colonial powers and the USA) did some bad things in the past does not mean we should sit by and let China get away with their rape of Africa.

The way they operate on the continent is often disgraceful, and we should not be afraid of saying so...