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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: eabDad who wrote (33038)	9/29/1998 10:54:00 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Z, Methinks somebody has polysilicon in his shorts. <G> BTW, the point was, there was never a shortage. It was all a scam. For which you obviously fell. MB

To: eabDad who wrote (33038)	9/29/1998 9:27:00 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

>>The 1995-1996 silicon shortage was a result of a pinch of the capacity to make polysilicon - the purification process. Metallic silicon was plentiful, but poly was NOT. It takes 12-18 months from the start of capital spending to produce poly from a new plant. The price of poly went from $45 to $65-70 per metric ton in the pinch point, but once poly suppliers had profits to spend on capacity, the problem went away by the end of 1997.<< Do you have any data on the growth of demand in polysilicon? Are there only a few firms that mine it and is it mined in conjunction with other metals? The pinch as you call it was due only to mfr capacity? In your opinion was it an explosion in demand or loss of capacity that caused the pinch at that time -- if demand, what was the primary driver?