Neu was enormously successful in hugely growing the value of the privately held family concern, Hugo Neu, from a simple scrap metal trading business into one of the largest automobile crushing operations in the U.S. He then profited from taking all that crushed metal and made it available for the needs of emerging nations for raw materials for their economies.

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One of Mr. Talbot's favorites is a fine, stiff netlike fabric used by the automobile industry as a support material between upholstery and metal or impact-resistant plastics.

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The Iranian automobile industry, he said, used to import sheet metal for auto bodies from South Korea.

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Weinberg added if the economic does take a downturn, automobile purchases will decline, meaning less use of platinum in autocatalysts, the biggest user of the metal.

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