Mining News Fronts (91e15115-75ce-4867-9787-b40baa5f0401)

• Phelps-Dodge Corp. signed an agreement with the Defense Materials Procurement Agency to increase copper production from the east ore deposit of the company's Copper Queen branch at Bisbee, Ariz. The company agreed to undertake a $25 million expansion program, including construction of a concentrating and leaching plant at the Bisbee mine and enlargement of the Douglas smelter. The Government agreed to buy the first 112,500 tons of the first 150,000 tons produced at 22e per lb if the company could not sell at a higher price. The new facilities will have a yearly capacity of 38,000 tons and should be in production by late 1954 or early 1955. • American Smelting & Refining Co. has started construction of a new building to house the Central Research laboratory at South Plainfield, N. J. It will have approximately 75 individual laboratories and an equal number of offices and shops. Modern apparatus to be installed will include electron microscopes, electric and fuelfired furnaces, miniature copper refineries and zinc plants, wire drawing machinery, and large pilot plant laboratory. In the new building scientists study the base metals, and the development of new uses for a number of Asarco by-products, arsenic, and little