Aluminum shipments off but outlook brighter

Jan 16, 2013 | 05:18 PM | Michael Cowden

Tags  MSCI, aluminum, shipments, inventories, service centers, automotive, aerospace, construction Michael Cowden

CHICAGO — Aluminum product shipments by North American distributors tumbled in December, but service center sources dismissed the fall as a typical year-end slowdown in business activity and predicted better times for 2013.

U.S. service centers shipped 91,900 tons of aluminum products in December, down 15.8 percent from 109,100 tons the previous month and off 15.9 percent from December 2011, according to Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) data, and full-year shipments of 1.49 million tons were down 0.9 percent from the previous year.....





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