Baton Rouge Depot
Baton Rouge Depot
2695 N. Sherwood Forest Drive
Baton Rouge, LA 70814-5397

DLA's Defense National Stockpile Center stores its $84 million bauxite stockpile at locations around the country, including the Baton Rouge Depot. The United States received the bauxite, which is the principal ore of aluminum, in 1949 as a war debt payment from Indonesia. DNSC now sells the material to aluminum companies such as Reynolds, Kaiser and Alcoa.

Earthlings can get an up-close look at the red planet by visiting a Mars exhibit at the NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The exhibit?s mounds of red rock-200 tons of bauxite-come from the Defense Logistics Agency?s Defense National Stockpile Center. DNSC sold NASA the bauxite for the exhibit, "One Main Street, Mars," and a team of Navy Seabees from Gulfport, Miss., hauled 23 truckloads of the material to the space center.

The Defense National Stockpile is managed by the U.S. Department of Defense, with day-to-day operations being guided by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). In 1998, the DLA sold 12,183 tons of pig tin from the stockpile. Of this total, 10,313 tons represented long-term sales contracts to RMT Corp. and Considar, Inc. (both of New York, NY). The DLA continued its monthly spot tin sales program under the same format as in recent years, with sales being held on the first Wednesday. The following depots held the largest inventories of tin, in descending order: Hammond, IN; Anniston, AL; Point Pleasant, WV; and Baton Rouge, LA. At 1998 yearend, 83,607 tons of tin remained in the NDS. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) 1999 tin sales program emphasized its long-term activity and had only a modest spot sales effort. DLA allocated 2,000 tons of tin to sell on the spot market at monthly sales. Two long-term sales were again conducted, one in the spring, another in the fall. DLA announced that its Annual Materials Plan for fiscal year 1999 called for sales of up to 12,000 tons of stockpile tin. Stockpile tin is warehoused at six depots, with the largest holdings at Hammond, IN, and Baton Rouge, LA. The Stockton, CA, depot was closed.