Police Wrap - 5 August

Danman, you don’t store piles of base metal on a building site, because you can’t do anything with a one tonne pile of base metal copper on that building site.

$10,000 for a roughly 1000kg of copper bullion turns into $10,000 for 100m(50kg) of copper piping because well, copper piping’s value comes from being an industrially manufactured good instead of being a pile of copper bricks.

Thieves don’t need to be bodybuilders or well organised to shift 50kg of piping, its just awkward since its in the form of hollow tubes.

I’d speculate that the thieves are not drug addicted losers, but in fact well organised, possibly an inside job ?

Just imagine how much equipment you would need to shift and transport $10,000 worth of copper..

I don’t think a junkie is just going to WIWO with it…

They certainly would not have the means to transport that amount of raw product.

Raw copper bullion is worth around US$8600 a tonne at the moment, I’d love to see a junkie hulk that out of a building site.

p1:

If you were being a medium-term speculator, and instead of getting rid of the evidence of your crime, were warehousing your immense pile of criminally-acquired copper, you’re probably known as ‘a possible next target’ to shorter-term planning thieves.
(Well guarded warehouses with low apparent turnover will pique curiosity)

p1 said :

If these copper thieves were better capitalised, they could afford to save up the stolen copper and only sell a couple of times a year while prices are good, ensuring constant work year round while maximising income…

Yeah, and if they were smart enough to do that, they might be gainfully employed and not drug-addicted losers who were drains on society. Your average criminal isn’t too good at long-term thinking. Or any thought beyond “where’s my next hit coming from?”

great security guard, leaves keys and valuables in the car. It would be interesting trying to explain that one to the boss lol

Incidence of copper theft almost matches the spot price of copper. (ie: market price comes down, fewer people steal copper)

If these copper thieves were better capitalised, they could afford to save up the stolen copper and only sell a couple of times a year while prices are good, ensuring constant work year round while maximising income…

Having lived in an area with lots of residential construction, I am amazed more stuff is not stolen from building sites. Most tradies seem to leave their stuff lying around everywhere, and leave buildings unlocked.

The guys next door to us had appliances stolen while they were building because the builder/tradies didn’t bother locking the almost completed house!

A 100m length of 22mm diameter piping at 0.91mm metal thickness is only 48kg of piping.

But as Jb says, seeing as you’re buying stolen goods at less than market rate, savings go straight to the bottom line, and any evidence of your crime gets buried in the walls (and can’t be traced).
Downside is that now criminals know that you have a pile of copper piping, you can either bury it in the walls ASAP, or lose to the conga-line of construction materials theft.

And think of the savings straight to the bottom line if you were going to have to otherwise buy that copper for your own construction project.

Incidence of copper theft almost matches the spot price of copper. (ie: market price comes down, fewer people steal copper)
But as copper cable and piping costs more than base copper material (but is always able to be sold when there’s construction going on or easily shipped to somewhere nearby that it is going to be used), while if you were just buying lumps of refined copper that $10,000 would represent something like a tonne of base metal, but as deliverable construction-site product, that is a 100m coil of 22mm piping.