The story is partly one of reduced demand. Most cobalt goes into the battery packs which power smartphones, tablets and laptops. Appetite for these, already strong in the 2010s, exploded during the covid-19 pandemic. It has since waned as people spend less time staring at their screens: as demand for consumer electronics fell, so did that for cobalt.
At the same time supply is rising, and fast. Susan Zou of Rystad Energy, a consultancy, forecasts that Congolese production will jump by 38% this year, to 180,000 tonnes. Most striking is a surge in Indonesian exports, which are projected to hit 18,000 tonnes this year, up from virtually none a few years ago. The world could find itself swimming in cobalt.
In other markets low prices would force producers to shut mines. Not for cobalt. The price has already fallen below many miners’ break-even point. Yet Glencore, the world’s biggest, said on February 15th that it may keep output nearly unchanged this year, having cranked it up in 2022; China Moly, a rival, is about to open a new facility that may yield 30,000 tonnes a year .
Prices may still rise a bit this year, as speculators seek to snap up bargains. Beyond 2025, however, another dampener looms. By this time, the first wave of electric-vehicle batteries, which typically last up to eight years, will begin to be recycled, reducing the need for new supply. No matter how fast the energy transition speeds up, the blue gold is unlikely to act as a brake.
Resourceful engineers eliminate another choke point. Cobalt is tough to mine and limited. So they found a better way forward without cobalt nickel lithium batteries
The name is derived from the German word 'kobald', meaning goblin.
Wow 😲
Julian Simon strikes again!!
Yes because we get it from slave labor. Things are pretty easy to get when you have no regard for human life and use slaves. Anyone who owns an EV has blood on their hands
Yeah beacause we send children into the lines to get the cobalt for big western company like Tesla. And there is a war over it in Congo. You can’t resolve a problem and replace it by another one
This seem to be correct, a recent drop in demand:
No it isn't...
This article is wrong in so many ways, I can only assume it was written by a bot…or someone with an agenda to diffuse attention from the rapine of the people and environment of the Congo for Cobalt. cobaltred
siddharthkara yes or no?
Good news Tesla
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Weak reporting in related to the child slave labor in African mining.
Thank you France
Amazing 🤩
NLepan Tsk, tsk. Cobalt’s problem was always environmental and human rights, not scarcity. Please research before writing:
The truth is that very large quantities of cobalt have already been extracted in Congo, since it is a byproduct of copper and nickel extraction. Mining companies and commodity traders can manipulate the price at will just by adjusting their processing output.
The absence of mention of the rise of LFP batteries (no cobalt) is rather significant.
Hoax
Why is the miner not wearing protective clothing
Depends on what your idea of what a long time is. Go out 100-200 years, and it will be gone.
an increase in supply shifts the supply curve to the right. the demand for cobalt has been on the rise due to planned obsolescence but now the demand can be fulfilled due to the increase in supply. millermicro23
😱
I can see all the greenies getting all excited watching this hand-mining slave labor take place so they can have all the feels
Capitalism does it again!