Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Less Digging for Metals: Stillwater Mining to Layoff Many

Stillwater Mining has announced a layoff of 21% or about 370 of their workers. Due to the deflation coming in force to their primary product of Platinum and Palladium they find it less economical to keep providing product into lessened demand.

Gold generally has a safe haven store of value plus jewelry demand component. Obviously in seeing gold's swoon you can see the demand component was hit. Platinum is generally more affected by the demand portion than a store of value. It is used heavily in the auto industry which is all but dead and in jewelry. Now they got a double hit because both jewelry and autos are big ticket items that consumers are unable to afford or finance.

Stillwater Mining is based in Columbus, Montana.

Related:
Big ticket items taking big hit
General Reduction in Force
Automobile demand meet the cliffs of the Grand Canyon

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