Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/241540
TRENDS AND TIDBITS continued from page 15 Caterpillar to Close Another Mining Equipment Plant Caterpillar Inc. has said that it will close another plant and lay off 240 additional workers as it continues to respond to a sharp drop in demand for its earthmoving products from customers in the mining industry. The planned shutdown of the Pulaski, Va. facility, which makes coal haulers and other equipment, is expected to be completed by mid-2014. It is the latest in a series of such closures announced by the Peoria, Ill.-based heavy equipment maker. Earlier this month, Caterpillar said it would restructure a factory that makes underground mining equipment in the Australian state of Tasmania, idling 200 workers there. Last month, it said it was closing a mining equipment facility in Kilgore, Texas and laying off the 100 workers employed in it. Those closures and firings came on the heels of a number of smaller consolidations and shutdowns at plants in Beckley, W. Va., Tazewell, Va., and Sudbury, Ontario that put more than 75 employees out of work. In addition, Caterpillar has laid off 900 workers at its biggest mining equipment plants in Decatur, Ill. and South Milwaukee, Wis. Caterpillar also makes construction equipment, railroad locomotives and a variety of reciprocating and turbine engines. But mining equipment is its most profitable product category. Those profits were one of the reasons it made mining equipment a focus of its merger and acquisition activity in recent years, buying Bucyrus, a U.S. maker of giant excavators and shovels, for $7.6 billion in 2010, and ERA Mining, a Chinese mining equipment company, for $654 million in 2012. But the ink was barely dry on those deals before Caterpillar's global mining customers, facing investor backlash over unpopular takeovers, budget overruns and falling metal prices, slashed capital spending, slowed development on some projects and shelved others entirely, and postponed or canceled new equipment orders. That pullback, which caught Caterpillar by surprise, has forced the company to cut its outlook three times so far this year. Last month, as it released disappointing third-quarter earnings, Caterpillar warned that its 2014 sales could be down as much as five percent from 2013. Over the past year, the company has cut more than 13,000 jobs, about 10 percent of the global total, as the slowdown in its mining business forced it to repeatedly post lower-than-expected quarterly results and The CAT logo is seen on back of a Caterpillar excavator machine at a work repeatedly slash its outlook. ● www.reuters.com/article, Nov 15, 2013 site in Detroit, Michigan on January 25, 2013. Chinese Waters the Busiest in the World Melbourne may be Australia's busiest container shipping port, but on the world stage, it comes in at No. 49. And, with 2.6 million containers going across its wharves in 2012, it is somewhat dwarfed by the 32.5 million containers shipped at Shanghai that year No developed world port makes it into the Top 10, according to the latest statistics from the World Shipping Council. Six of the 10 are in China: after Shanghai comes Singapore, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Busan (South Korea), Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Jebel Ali (Dubai) and Tianjin. Rotterdam makes it into the No. 11 place, followed by Malaysia's Port Kelang, Taiwan's Kaohsiung, Hamburg and Antwerp. The largest North American container port is Los Angeles (in 16th place), while the 19th century's great maritime power ranks one entry, Felixstowe at No. 36. Shipping via the Arctic Circle has taken another step forward with talk of establishing a transshipment port in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. One of Norway's oldest maritime companies, Tschudi Shipping, is looking for a location in Alaska to handle cargo shipped along Russia's northern coast- IDA UNIVERSAL January-February 2014 line and through the Bering Strait. The port in western Alaska would allow those cargoes to be moved to other vessels for shipment to East Asian and North American ports. Alaskan governor Mead Treadwell has welcomed the proposal and said the existing Aleutian ports at Adak and Dutch Harbour could be the links between Arctic and Pacific shipping routes. Brazil's iron ore giant, Vale, has found a way to get around Beijing's ban on its largest bulk carriers entering Chinese harbors – hand over the operation of four 400,000 tonne carriers to a Chinese company, Shan- dong Shipping Corp, which apparently will be allowed to sail the massive vessels into Chinese ports. The $US500 million deal will get around Vale's problem of being able to use only smaller bulk carriers to bring iron ore from Brazil. According to Beijing's Economic Observer, Vale has shipped 1.1 billion tonnes of iron ore to China in the past 40 years. The paper quotes Vale chief executive Jose Martins as saying his company now hopes to move larger annual quantities to China as a result of the deal with Shandong. ● www.theaustralian.com. Nov 15, 2013 Trends continued on page 42 19