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Show African Company Now Leads World IN Output of Copper BOSTON The copper industry says the Boston News Bureau, hails a new champion. No longer does American capital, long dominant dom-inant in the industry, control the world's largest producer of the red metal, in far away Africa, where English and Belgian capitalists cap-italists have labored for years patiently pa-tiently and against terrific odds particularly in respect to labor and tranportation, there has final- ly emerged the world biggest and richest copper mine Union Miniere du haut Katanga, or "Katanga" as it is popularly known in copper circles. The great South American deposit de-posit owned by the Chile Copper company, now a constituent part of the Anaconda Copper releases primacy to its African rival, albeit al-beit Katanga in 1929 had a lead of only 2,500,000 pounds, the production pro-duction of the two properties being be-ing 299,576,000 poundr and 302,-012,000 302,-012,000 pounds respectively. Here is the lineup of the big four and they are so far in advance ad-vance of the rest of the producing group that the fifth largest is not within 100,000,000 pounds of the leaders' 1920 production pounds Katanga 302,012,000 Chile Copper Co 299,576,000 Anaconda, own mines 281,933,000 The above giants in thajproduc-ing thajproduc-ing industry contributes over 30 per cent of the entire output of the world in 1929, 3,800,000,000 pounds. While the American - copper mining interests say they do not vjew with alarm the entrance of a formidable foreign competitor in the producing ranks, it is ob-, vious that Katanga is to be reckoned reck-oned with in all that concerns the welfare of the industry. We trace the growth of the new champion cham-pion over the past ten years, in pounds. 1929 3O2,012,0Of 1928 247,920,050 1927 196,552,656 1926 " 177.773.OOC 1925 198,644,000 1924 188,648,000 1923 124,466,000 1922 92,828,000 1921 64,948,000 1920 40,258,000 Were it not for the fact that the ore- is sensationally rich the yield in 1929 being 135,7 pounds of copper per ton the company wouldi be prohibitively handicapped handicap-ped in respect to costs. The mines on the American continent do not average to yield 40 pounds per ton. Katanga's report just issued for the 1929 calendar year places ore reserves at 73,000,000 tons, "containing more than 5,000,000 tons of copper 'or over 10,000,-000,000 10,000,-000,000 pounds of metal, a total which measures the vast poten-! poten-! tialities of this great property in the years to come. Despite the drop in the price of copper, Katanga has yet to evidence evi-dence any disposition to curtail output as have American producers, produc-ers, its prodnct for the first half of 1930 being 143,299,000 pounds : against 140,873,000 for the corresponding cor-responding period of 1929. |