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Gold/Mining/Energy : Breakwater Resources (T.BWR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Harry K who wrote (879)	3/20/2002 8:48:13 PM
From: John Sladek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 962

Harry, Possibly this had something to do with it? ca.news.yahoo.com Wednesday March 13 3:53 PM EST Teck-Cominco Urges More Zinc Supply Discipline By Lesley Wroughton TORONTO (Reuters) - Zinc producers should make more cutbacks to lower inventories, and possibly even trigger a deficit, which would put prices on a firmer footing when demand does pick up, the world's biggest zinc miner Teck-Cominco Ltd (Toronto:TEKb.TO - news) said on Wednesday. President Steven Dean, speaking at a mining conference in Toronto, said he hoped large producers would independently become more disciplined on zinc supply instead of waiting for high-cost producers to go out of business. He said Teck-Cominco cut refined metal output in 2001 by 120,000 tonnes, and recently cut 55,000 tonnes more. It also reduced output at a key Alaska mine by up to 40,000 tonnes. "The key is to minimize inventory build-up, so that we don't have repeats of history where, when demand does recover, it takes several years to have an impact on price due to massive inventory build-up," Dean told the Prospectors and Developers Conference of Canada. He said the effects of industry supply-side discipline, cuts in net exports from China, together with current concentrate tightness augur well for a price recovery in zinc later this year. The metal had already bounced off lows of 33 cents in late 2001 to around 37 cents a pound at present, he added. "The concept of supply discipline is a major factor in realizing the promise of our industry to increase total shareholder return," Dean said. PRESSURE TO GROW There was a lot of pressure to grow, Dean said, but Teck-Cominco management felt that the firm would be more successful as a mid-tier company, allowing it to remain nimble and less bureaucratic. Teck-Cominco was formed last year when Teck bought the shares it did not already own in its Cominco unit, which increased its diversity in the mining industry, with assets that included zinc, electricity generation, coking coal and gold. Dean said the company had modeled its diversified strategy on British-based miner Rio Tinto Plc (RIO.L) with a growth rate of around 15 percent. "The capital in our case will only be applied to opportunities that are expected to generate at least a plus-10 percent return to shareholders at the anticipated lowest quartile price for that commodity," he said. He said the company's strategy was also to expand new products such as low-alpha alloys for the electronics industry and to develop new applications for existing products, as with zinc-air fuel cells. The mining industry has to become more customer orientated instead of rushing into production, and learn to consider market needs first, Dean added. He also said it was time for the mining industry to join mainstream thinking on issues of social and environmental accountability. "In many ways we are considered outsiders in a world that considers itself clean and green. We are well behind the progress that, say, the petroleum sector has made in both perception and reality in this area," he said. (Reuters Toronto newsroom +416-941-8101, toronto.newsroom@reuters.com)