Cobalt

Cobalt

Postby winston » Mon Apr 24, 2017 1:59 pm

Cobalt Prices To Rocket As Tesla And Apple Scramble For Supplies

by James Burgess

Analysts at Macquarie Research project deficits of 885 tonnes of this resource next year, 3,205 in 2019 and 5,340 in 2020.

That’s a deficit increase of 503 percent.


Swiss-based Pala Investments and China’s Shanghai Chaos stockpiled 17 percent of last year’s global production


Cobalt is critical to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, and it makes up some 35 percent of the lithium-ion battery mix


A huge uptick in EV production and a dozen battery gigafactories coming on line will more than strain cobalt supplies. But the bottlenecks are already worrisome; especially since some 60 percent of the world’s supply is unethical, and mined by children under inhuman conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).


Not only are we looking at a shortage already in 2017, but we’re looking at 20 percent demand growth every year.


The battery industry already uses some 42 percent of global cobalt production, while the rest is used in industrial and military applications—all competing for supply.


Source: Oilprice.com

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cobalt-pr ... 00344.html
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Cobalt

Postby winston » Mon May 29, 2017 6:35 pm

Cobalt Frenzy: Prices Surge 150% As Tech Giants Battle For Supply

by James Burgess

Cobalt is a metal that few investors know much about – it is critical to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution because it makes up some 35% of the lithium-ion battery mix.


Analysts at Macquarie Research project deficits of 885 tons of this resource next year, 3,205 in 2019 and 5,340 in 2020. That’s a deficit increase of 503 percent.


Here are 5 reasons to keep a close eye on US Cobalt (TSX:USCO.V; OTC:SCTFF):
#1 In the Cobalt Surge, All-American Supply is Key
#2 Watch What Hedge Funds are Doing with Cobalt
#3 In the Heart of the #1 Cobalt Trend in America
#4 The Dream Team Behind the Bet on Cobalt
#5 Proving Up 10 Million Tons of Cobalt


Source: Oilprice.com

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cobalt-f ... 00032.html
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Cobalt

Postby winston » Thu Feb 22, 2018 7:24 am

Apple in talks to buy key mineral used in batteries as China secures bulk of global supply

While smartphones use around eight grammes of refined cobalt, the battery for an electric car requires more than 1,000 times more.

The price of cobalt has more than tripled in the past 18 months to trade at more than US$80,000 a metric tonne.

Two-thirds of supplies come from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

About 62 per cent of the world’s cobalt supply is now controlled by China, and more than 90 per cent of that comes from Congo.

China Molybdenum, based in the central province of Henan, bought a 56 per cent stake in Congo-based copper and cobalt miner Tenke Fungurume Mining for US$2.65 billion in 2016.


Source: SCMP

http://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/ar ... cures-bulk
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Cobalt

Postby investar » Sat Mar 03, 2018 5:29 pm

Cobalt prices soar, but Congo is not seeing much of this rocketing prices:

https://citizen.co.za/news/news-africa/ ... ng-cobalt/


and The World's Cobalt Supply is in Jeopardy:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspecu ... cd5b351be5


Apple's recent move signals a controversial buy on metal commodities:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/27/apples- ... etals.html
investar
Boss' Left Hand Person
 
Posts: 813
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2010 11:59 pm

Commodities - General News 03 (Jul 14 - Dec 18)

Postby behappyalways » Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:52 pm

Goblin metals

What if China corners the cobalt market?

Nickel could make a good substitute—provided car batteries don’t catch fire


COBALT derives its name from Kobold, a mischievous German goblin who, according to legend, lurks underground. For centuries it vexed medieval miners by lookinglike a valuable ore that subsequently turned into worthless—and sometimes noxious—rubble.

Once again it is threatening to cause trouble, this time in the growing market for batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), each of which uses about 10kg of cobalt. The source of mischief is no longer in Germany, though, but in China.

It is widely known that more than half of the world’s cobalt reserves and production are in one dangerously unstable country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. What is less well known is that four-fifths of the cobalt sulphates and oxides used to make the all-important cathodes for lithium-ion batteries are refined in China. (Much of the other 20% is processed in Finland, but its raw material, too, comes from a mine in Congo, majority-owned by a Chinese firm, China Molybdenum.)

On March 14th concerns about China’s grip on Congo’s cobalt production deepened when GEM, a Chinese battery maker, said it would acquire a third of the cobalt shipped by Glencore, the world’s biggest producer of the metal, between 2018 and 2020—equivalent to almost half of the world’s 110,000-tonne production in 2017. This is likely to add momentum to a rally that has pushed the price of cobalt up from an average of $26,500 a tonne in 2016 to above $90,000 a tonne.

It is not known whether non-Chinese battery, EV or consumer-electronics manufacturers have done similar, unannounced deals with Glencore. But Sam Jaffe of Cairn Energy Research Advisors, a consultancy, says it will be a severe blow to some firms.

He likens the outcome of the deal to a game of musical chairs in which Chinese battery manufacturers have taken all but one of the seats. “Everybody else is frantically looking for that last empty chair.”

Mr Jaffe doubts the cobalt grab is an effort by Chinese firms to corner or manipulate the market for speculative ends. Instead, he says, they are likely to be driven by a “desperate need” to fulfil China’s ambitious plans to step up production of EVs.

Others see it more ominously. George Heppel of CRU, a consultancy, says that, in addition to GEM sweeping up such a sizeable chunk of Glencore’s output, China Moly may eventually ship its Congo cobalt home rather than to Finland, giving China as much as 95% of the cobalt-chemicals market.

“A lot of our clients are South Korean and Japanese tech firms and it’s a big concern of theirs that so much of the world’s cobalt sulphate comes from China.” Memories are still fresh of a maritime squabble in 2010, during which China restricted exports of rare-earth metals vital to Japanese tech firms. China produces about 85% of the world’s rare earths.

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 almost always mined alongside copper or nickel. Even at current prices, the quantities needed are not enough to justify production for cobalt alone.

But demand could explode if EVs surge in popularity. Mr Heppel says that, though most cobalt is currently mined for batteries in smartphones and for superalloys inside jet engines (see chart), its use for EVs could jump from 9,000 tonnes in 2017 to 107,000 tonnes in 2026.

The resulting higher prices would eventually unlock new sources of supply. But already non-Chinese battery manufacturers are looking for ways to protect themselves from potential shortages. Their best answer to date is the other “goblin metal” closely associated with cobalt, nickel, whose name comes from a German spirit closely related to Old Nick.

The materials most commonly used for cathodes in EV batteries are a combination of nickel, manganese and cobalt known as NMC, and one of nickel, cobalt and aluminium known as NCA.

As cobalt has become pricier and scarcer, some battery makers have produced cobalt-lite cathodes by raising the nickel content—to as much as eight times the amount of cobalt. This allows the battery to run longer on a single charge, but makes it harder to manufacture and more prone to burst into flames. The trick is to get the balance right.

Strangely, nickel has not had anything like cobalt’s price rise. Nor do the Chinese appear to covet it. Oliver Ramsbottom of McKinsey, a consultancy, says the reason for this relative indifference dates back to the commodities supercycle in 2000-12, when Indonesia and the Philippines ramped up production of class-2 nickel—in particular nickel pig iron, a lower-cost ingredient of stainless steel—until the bubble burst. The subsequent excess capacity and stock build-up caused nickel prices to plummet from $29,000 a tonne in 2011 to below $10,000 a tonne last year.

As yet, the demand for high-quality nickel suitable for EVs has not boosted production. Output of Class-1 nickel for EVs was only 35,000 tonnes last year, out of total nickel production of 2.1m tonnes. But by 2025 McKinsey expects EV-related nickel demand to rise 16-fold to 550,000 tonnes.

In theory, the best way to ensure sufficient supplies of both nickel and cobalt would be for prices to rise enough to make mining them together more profitable. But that would mean more expensive batteries, and thus electric vehicles. Only a goblin would relish such a conundrum.

Source: The Economist
血要热 头脑要冷 骨头要硬
behappyalways
Millionaire Boss
 
Posts: 39914
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:43 pm

Re: Cobalt

Postby winston » Wed Jun 13, 2018 1:22 pm

This unstable country could trigger an explosive cobalt rally

Today, there are around one million EVs in the world. By 2027, analysts estimate that there will be 27 million EVs on the road.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) accounts for 60% of the world’s cobalt supply. The DRC passed a new mining law in March. This law forces foreign mining companies to pay higher taxes and royalties to the DRC government.


Source: Daily Crux

http://thecrux.com/this-unstable-countr ... alt-rally/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Cobalt

Postby winston » Tue Jul 10, 2018 5:30 am

Is the rally in cobalt a flash in the pan? Some of the battery-sceptic funds certainly think so

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is predicting “severe oversupplies” in the lithium market, and Tesla’s boss Elon Musk says the amount of cobalt his company will use to make electric cars is headed toward “almost nothing.”

In the case of cobalt, supply will exceed demand by 652 tonnes this year, and that will widen to 20,842 tonnes next year.

The surplus is expected to send prices tumbling to an average of US$62,502 a tonne in 2019, down 23 per cent from the forecast for this year, according to the London-based research and consulting firm.

By 2022, the price will average just US$44,585.


Source: SCMP

https://www.scmp.com/business/commoditi ... -certainly
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Cobalt

Postby behappyalways » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:29 pm

The precious metal sparking a new gold rush

By Natalie Sherman

Demand: 8% to 10% pa

Although increased production is likely to help meet demand in the next few years, analysts say shortages loom by as soon as 2022.

Gerbrand Ceder at the University of California, Berkeley is conducting research into ways of creating stable batteries that do not need large amounts of cobalt.

However, he says deploying such technology at scale - especially in cars - is at least five to 10 years away.


Source: BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44732847
血要热 头脑要冷 骨头要硬
behappyalways
Millionaire Boss
 
Posts: 39914
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:43 pm

Re: Cobalt

Postby winston » Thu Aug 16, 2018 9:32 pm

China Takes Control of Cobalt Mines as It Advances Its Battery Industry for Electric Vehicles

By Frank Fang

Cobalt is one of the key components of the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles (EVs).

More than half of the world’s cobalt originates from Congo, and China’s control of the cobalt industry.

China had provided $9 billion in financial aid to Africa from 2007 to 2009.

In November 2017, China provided financial aid of $6 million in emergency humanitarian assistance to Congo. This investment allowed China to gain certain mining rights to copper and cobalt deposits in Congo.


Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), founded in 2011 and headquartered in Ningde City, is currently the world’s largest manufacturer of battery cells to power EVs.


Source: Epoch Times

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-tak ... -238084345
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Cobalt

Postby winston » Sat Sep 08, 2018 4:39 am

Cobalt will likely be oversupplied from 2019, with prices probably around $42,000 a ton over next three years. That compares with about $63,000 now on the London Metal Exchange.

Source: Bloomberg
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Next

Return to Commodities

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests

cron