Cobalt recently entered in the growing market for batteries for electric vehicles, which each uses about 10kg of cobalt. It's known that more than half of the world's cobalt reserves and production are in the country the Democratic Republic of Congo. But what is less known is that four-fifths of the cobalt sulphates and oxides used to make the cathodes for lithium-ion batteries are refined in China. Few analysts expect the cobalt market to soften soon. Production in Congo is likely to increase in the next few years, but some investment may be deterred by a recent five-fold leap in royalties on cobalt. Investment elsewhere is limited because cobalt is nearly always mined alongside copper or nickel. At current prices the quantities needed are not enough to justify production for cobalt alone.
https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21739161-nickel-could-make-good-substituteprovided-car-batteries-dont-catch-fire-what-if
2 comments:
What's interesting about this article is that it talks about how the world's largest cobalt reserve is in Congo. Congo's city of Katanga owns about 50-60% of all the Cobalt in the world. However, due to the crisis in the country the destabilization is threatening the supply of this Cobalt which would indirectly affect US, European, Chinese economies. I wonder if the demand will spike up and/or price of Cobalt will increase due to future expectations of shortage.
If there is an expected shortage and it does happen to come true prices will increase for sure. As for right now I think it would be safe to say there will be a steady increase in prices. This coming from a business standpoint, most businesses will want to maximize profits while they can that way if cobalt becomes scarce they can get out of the market before it fails.
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