A painful story..................

Orestis Prixxxxxxxx was Technical Manager of a Large Cables Manufacturing Industry. We had a very successful co-operation, long time ago, especially in Process Cooling applications.

On March 2008 he invited us at his office, and announced that due to an Economics Managerial Decision the Utilities Budget is lowered to 20%. As to follow his new budget, he intend to replace all specialty products and spare parts to open market products and items.

Being extremely satisfied from the success of our applications he could continue the use of our products, if we accept to decrease the prices by 80%.

From curiosity, we run a financial discussion and asked actual figures, to understand the reasons of the problem.

According to the data, the continuous increase of the copper price, plus the competition from China makes the margins of the company almost nothing. The Economical Staff, as to show still profits, and keep the banks and the stockholders in order, decided, for this year, to cut the utilities and maintenance budget (which was for the 2007 about 8% of the total budget) to 1.5%. So the budget will still show profits of roughly 6.5%

The Golden Boys of the economical staff were expecting also the drop of the copper price at the second half of 2008, so an additional profit margin would be awarded to the company's finance. If this happens, then they could maybe return the prices of our products to normal.

We kindly reply that this attempt is a "Golden Boys" approach, and we do not believe that could succeed. The drop of the copper prices, if happens, will drop also the prices of Chinese cables, leading to further prices decrease. On the other hand, replacing the process cooling by sulfuric acid from the open market will induce calcium sulfate and metal oxides precipitation onto copper wire, leading to poor attachment of the plastic isolation during cabling. This will heavily deteriorate the final products quality, and they are going to loose all their customers.

As a final conclusion, Mr. Orestis claim that this is decision of the Economical staff, and as it was impossible such a discount, our co-operation was terminated.

Copper prices dropped from 4$/LB to 1.2$/LB, means that the total cost of the production dropped by 65%. "Golden Boys" were right at this guess.

Orestis Call me over the phone on December 10, 2008. Unfortunately was not about termination of the financial problems of the plant and attempt to restore the quality of their cables.

He said that that :

• The plant has closed down this morning, and everybody, himself included has been fired.
• He is unpaid four months ago, and all his reserves have been spend.
• He has not money for Christmas celebration for his family.
• If we could financially support him, or at list to find a job for him.