So buying equipment is fewer dollars out. Mistake.
We do end up buying a lot of foreign equipment, whereas we use to make just about all our own. We buy most pumps from the States and Germany, also bearings, drives, controllers, boards, computers and mills are mostly from overseas. Tanks, shafts, media, rubber, seals, gears, pipes, couplings, motors, glass, fans, ducting, and structural steelwork we can make here. Screens and classifiers can be got here, but by and large that has moved south. Advanced concentrator equipment systems used to be a big item in Canada. Now we find a lot of that stuff in Australia and the US. Lab Equip is mostly foreign made.
But by far the greater dollar by comparison is the dollars lost in sales, as most metals go overseas and lose more foreign bucks than are saved in capex. So we pay less for, say, between 40 and 60% of capex, which is perhaps 10% of metals in.
The reason energy is higher, is that overseas exports net fewer dollars, so domestic prices have to rise.
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