Mining
Media
Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal
- Title
- Mining
- Creator
- Mitke, Chas. A.
- Language
- English
- Source
- The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume XXV (No. 7) July 1949
- Year
- 1949
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- Mining By Chas. A. Mitke Consulting Mining Engineer May Production: Acoje Mining Co. — 5,500 tons, worth ................. P153.000 Benguet-Balatoc ........................................................... 648,970 Mindanao Mother Lode ................................................ 204 25S Lepanto Consolidated .................................................... 501,000 Atok-Big Wedge Mining Co.......................................... 362,198 Consolidated Mines ....................................................... 515,600 Surigao Consolidated .................................................. 227,016 Gold and silver production for the first four months of 1949, according to Bureau of Mines fi gures, amounted to P5,359,316, which is at the rate of approximately P16,000,000 annually, as compared to £76,838,987 in 1940. Base-metal production for the first four months of 1949 was valued at £5,413,336, or approximately £16,240,000 annually. This gives an estimated total production from all metals of around £32:000,000 for the year, or about one-third of the 1940 production, and consi derably less than the estimates for 1941 and 1942. The base-metal returns for 1949 were largely made up of shipments of Lepanto Consolidated cop per concentrates and Acoje metallurgical, and Masinloc refractory, chrome production. Manganese shipments during the four-month period only amount ed to 5,900 tons, which would approximate a total of 18,000 tons for the year, as against 52,166 tons in 1940 and much larger shipments in 1941. Unfortunately for Philippine base metals, the chrome market in the United States at the present time has turned “soft”, and buyers are not even in terested in high-grade metallurgical chrome. Pro ducers who happen to have contracts are still able • to ship, but others cannot sell their product. Manganese, if obtainable in quantity, could be sold, but there are no large deposits of commercial manganese in the Philippines. There is very little high-grade metallurgical chrome in the Philippines. Furthermore, the pro ducers of both chrome and manganese are faced with severe competition from countries such as Rus sia, Turkey, Africa, and Brazil, where there are much lower labor costs, and freight rates to the United States are much less than from the Philip pines. Japan, before the war was the only market for low-grade chrome and manganese, and also for Phil ippine iron ores which cannot compete with the United States ores because of the long haul and high freight rates. Since the war, however, SCAP has insisted on United States specifications for base metals sold to Japan, and as a consequence Philippine producers are having a hard time. Philippine iron producers formerly sold large tonnages of raw ore to Japan, but now, where India and the United States receive individual contracts as large as 800,000 tons, Philippine producers can only get comparatively small orders. This, for va rious reasons,—high sulphur content; low iron (be low 60%) content, and so on. Both Hainan Island and India produce a more desirable ore than the Phil ippines. The impression prevails that “just as soon as War-Damage payments to the closed-down mines are completed, mining will return to its pre-war status as the second largest industry in the Islands”. This is an erroneous idea. A number of the pre-war gold producers, waiting for War-Damage payments, are now, due to high production costs, in the sub marginal class, and even if rehabilitated most of them will not be able to “make the grade”. WHAT THE ISLANDS NEED TO ENABLE THE MINERAL INDUSTRY TO EXPAND, IS NEW MINES TO TAKE THE PLACE OF THOSE THAT WILL NEVER OPERATE AGAIN. From time to time promising prospects are un covered, but without funds to prove them up in depth, they are returning to jungle. If we are to be suc cessful in the rehabilitation of our mining industry, the rate of new discovery must be drastically in creased. From 1932 to 1936 the Philippines experienced an unprecedented mining boom. Oddly enough, this oc curred at a time when the rest of the world was going through its greatest industrial panic. Many ex cellent gold-and base-metal prospects were uncovered which later became good producers and dividend pay ers. THAN GOLD AND SILVER METALS AND ORES OTHER 292