Thoughts on thwarting theft

While I can't speak for other companies, I can speak to the fact that it's always tough buying non-ferrous metals. Regardless of what level of the supply chain we buy from, there are few bargains and we work hard to make a reasonable margin. Of course, it's a little easier when markets behave as they have in the past few weeks; our markets continue to demonstrate their ability to solidify and move higher despite fundamental factors that really don't provide much impetus to do so.

Tough as it is to buy metal, it's tougher to see our efforts compromised by the on-going theft of our products once they've been shipped from our yards. Specifically, we and other shippers to China report an increase in thefts in that country as consumers report shortages on a very regular basis. We sincerely believe the amount of material that our consumers are receiving may indeed be less than what we've shipped, but our in-house systems, aided by computers and barcodes among other security checks, attest to the veracity of our weights.

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