In his comments at a conference in New York, US Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose Fernandez hinted at the fact that China’s miner CMOC may be responsible for global cobalt oversupply.
“In the case of cobalt, there’s a company called CMOC which is driving this oversupply and that’s keeping prices down,” he said in an interview to Bloomberg.
His comments come as the US seeks to loosen China’s dominance in critical minerals market. Since cobalt, a key component in lithium-ion batteries, has been trading at its lowest price since 2019, Western companies have been struggling to build their own mining and refining infrastructure.
“What we’re seeing now, I feel, is a variation of predatory pricing,” Fernandez said at a conference.
Global cobalt output amounted to around 230 000 tons last year with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) being the largest producer, according to the data released by the Cobalt Institute and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, adding about 14 200 tons to the world cobalt market’s oversupply. Meanwhile, Chinese companies processed nearly 80% of the metal.
Low cobalt prices are harming upstream producers and recyclers, and low-margin companies in this sector resort to layoffs and project closures. Australian miner Jervois Global mothballed the Idaho mine last year, which would have been the first new US cobalt mine in decades.
Theodor Lisovoy, Editor in Chief of the European bureau, Rough&Polished
