copper futures predicted good!, page-8

HH

I wouldn't stress too much about demand. Copper usage has been climbing continuously over the past decade or so while these innovations have been coming through.
The plastic water piping is neat, until a mouse or rat finds that it's an easy little chew to get a drink and of course it's inside your wall cavity, an expensive maintenance issue to save a few dollars at best during construction. (speaking from costly personal experience) I would never put plastic pipe in any house I wanted to live in again.

Where the usage has seen a bit of a drop per item, like dishwasher motors etc...they are using a lot less per dish washer than they would have a decade ago. Same story for many other appliances with the advent of rare earth magnets etc etc. However two other factors counter the idea that this will lead to less demand; Firstly, scrap recycling is dropping off because it isn't economically viable (this was a good part of historical supply) and of course all those people in developing countries are now buying appliances. Volume per item may drop but sheer volume of items is rapidly growing. Overall consumption is climbing while supply is finite. There was a macquarie commodities report analysing similar a week or so ago...see if you can get your hands on it. Very good reading and basically argued that we are bumping along near the bottom of predicted pricing $3-3.20 bottom channel from memory). Some good research backing their claims. Given AVB's all in costs are likely to be less than $1.50 I'm pretty relaxed about the pricing issues.