Entertaining ways of European metal users

Selling Canadian metals in Europe does not sound too enthralling but the personalities you meet and the meals and conversation are sometimes unforgettable.

Several times a year, at about 6- to 8-week intervals, I would visit the large and medium consumers of base and precious metals, trying to build up sales. Some memorable moments are worth mentioning, such as one occasion with Firth Brown Ltd. in Sheffield, the United Kingdom’s second largest producer of alloy and stainless steels, including the 18% chromium, 8% nickel variety, a large nickel user.

Lunch in the Firth Brown board dining room was always a faultless series of dishes such as poached salmon, roast northern beef, Yorkshire pudding, etc., with excellent French wines, presided over by Sir John Green, a genial man born for the age of Pickwick.

Of humble origin, Sir John started in the metal foundry at age 13. His strong Yorkshire speech did not hinder the dancing of his quicksilver mind. He had headed the nationalized U.K. iron and steel industry which was later de-nationalized — a horrible double agony for metal managers.

His quite exceptional grasp of international metals mining and trading dazzled me over the years and I hated the meals to end. I learned a great deal from him, particularly about silver and gold trading, a large contributor to his considerable fortune. He would have been a great credit to Canada and always wanted to know everything about us. He was no effete, poseur type.

The in-land, independent, thousand-year-old state of Luxembourg, meaning “little fortress,” only 999 square miles in size with 350,00 people, is small but rich. It is one of the few nations with a declining birth rate, low unemployment and virtually no poverty.

Its industrial wealth comes mainly from the mining of large deposits of iron ore called minette, basic iron and steel and alloy steel output, and two million tourists per year.

The country yields the highest per capita output of iron and steel of any nation in the world and 98% of the steel is exported. The gross national product of the small population is about $3 billion per year.

The major iron and steel producer is known as ARBED, an acronym. The company’s main office is a magnificently appointed palace.

On my sales trips to ARBED, I was fortunate in also being welcome at the home of the prime minister, the distinguished Joseph Bech, who had engineered the locating of the headquarters of European Coal, Iron and Steel in Luxembourg on a “temporary” basis.

His eyes twinkling, Bech quoted the French proverb, “It is only the temporary which lasts forever.” That mineral body and three other EEC agencies are still there, many years later.

I also enjoyed a reception at the official 16th century palace of the ruling sovereign, Grand Duke Jean. We were Second World War officers in the Irish Guards regiment (Buckingham Palace, Guards Armored Division) and were commissioned on the same day. Part of the Grand Duke’s education was at the University of Montreal. Inco supplied the palladium for the issue of his wedding celebration medallions.

Luxembourg cuisine combines the subtle sauces and lightness of French cooking with the heartiness of German food. High in the ARBED edifice is the board dining room where the meals are exquisite. At various time, one has quail eggs or thin Ardennes forest ham and then fresh blue trout, jellied suckling pig or tender forest venison with its red currant sauce, accompanied by Moselle white wine from the local vineyards along the river of the same name.

In a future column, I would like to outline the fascinating metals world of another relatively small European nation, overcrowded and highly industrialized Belgium, with its high mine output of coal and metals.003 T.P. (Tom) Mohide, a former president of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, served as a director of mining resources with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources prior to his retirement in 1986.