It looks as though we made it through another winter, this year we had it easy, this was one of mildest and easiest to deal with that I can remember.  As I write this article in early April I am seeing mild swings in the precious metals markets that seem to follow the news reports coming out of Europe. 

Our in house precious metals lab has been operating for 5 weeks now and we are gaining a wealth of information.  We now have an accurate analysis of most of the converters that we see regularly and will have more and more as time goes on.  This will be a never ending process with new converters being introduced to the market constantly. 

Well after nearly two years of research and thousands of miles traveled visiting refineries and labs all over North America we have installed a state of the art precious metals laboratory here at Recore in NH!  This is the only in house precious metals lab in the North East.  This is huge for both Recore and our suppliers, here is why. 

Well we are in the worst of it now, weather wise that is.  Typically February is the toughest month of the year in the salvage business, you all know what I’m talking about from the parts and cars frozen to the ground in the yard to the fuel gelled up in the ramp truck that’s 50 miles away. It’s February that separates the men from the boys in this business!

OK it’s the start of a new year it’s time to get going!  No one is going to say things have been easy or normal in recent years, let’s look at the recent past as a learning experience and take what we’ve learned to change the way we do things and make our businesses more profitable going forward.

As the year comes to an end, I can’t help but think how tough it has been for yard owners here in the Northeast.  Having been a counter man, a salvage buyer, a ramp truck driver and a dismantler in a salvage yard, I can identify with the issues that face yard owners.  Let’s look at some of the issues that face the yards now that were not part of the business twenty or thirty years ago. 

Wow!  Things certainly change quickly in the precious metals markets.  In last month’s article I reported that precious metals had been relatively stable with moderate price changes all year.  I was looking toward a busy fall season with salvage yard operators enjoying good pricing for their materials. 

Fall is here.  This is my favorite time of year, the air is crisp and the scenery is spectacular!  Fall is also one of the busiest times of year for us here at Recore Trading.  Most of the yards we deal with start their annual “let’s get things cleaned and up and off the ground before the snow comes” ritual.  The “Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting another winter with lots and lots of snow…

It has been a very interesting summer this year as far as the prices of the commodities we deal with are concerned.  To date, we have not seen the typical mid to late summer price drop of ferrous scrap in the Northeast.  As most of you know some of the steel mills close for vacation during the summer months, causing a supply/demand situation where price drops of $20.00 per ton were not uncommon.

August in the scrap business typically means a lot of people vacationing, some businesses closing for vacation, even the big mills that process vast amounts of scrap are in neutral.