The facilities were developed by QMB New Materials, a joint venture between Tsingshan Holding Group, GEM (SZSE: 002340), CATL (SZSE: 300750) and Hanwa (TSE: 8078). The first two HPAL operations came online in 2021 as part of the existing Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park. The country's higher cobalt production itself has come from four new high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) facilities that process ore to produce both nickel and cobalt in mixed hydroxide precipitate, which can then be exported. This rapid change was the result of an increase in investment in Indonesia's battery metals supply chain, predominantly from Chinese companies - they moved in after Indonesia banned nickel ore exports in 2019. Work is now being done to build a mechanized mine at the Mutoshi copper-cobalt mine site, which was previously the home of a multi-year pilot project for safely formalizing artisanal mining, although delays have pushed its completion back to 2024.Īfter producing only 2,700 MT of cobalt in 2021, Indonesia surged into second place last year with output of 10,000 MT. Outside the DRC's artisanal mining sphere, cobalt is largely produced as a by-product of copper mines, including the Tenke Fungurume mine, owned by the CMOC Group (OTC Pink: CMCLF,HKEX:3993) Metalkol RTR, owned by Eurasian Resources Group and the KOV and the Mutanda and Mashamba East mines, owned by Glencore (LSE: GLEN,OTC Pink:GLCNF). The DRC's mines minister formally approved the ASM Cobalt Standard last year, and plans for assessing its effectiveness at pilot sites are being developed. Aside from that, the Responsible Minerals Initiative, in cooperation with the Global Battery Alliance, has drafted a framework for a regulated artisanal mining sector. Efforts to date include the creation of a new state company, Entreprise Générale du Cobalt, to buy and market all artisanal cobalt mined in the DRC it was set up in 2020 and has not yet gotten off the ground.
But with hundreds of thousands of people relying on artisanal mining for income, eliminating it completely isn't possible. However, cobalt mining in the DRC is associated with rampant human rights abuses and child labor, due in part to the large presence of unregulated artisanal mining.Īttempts have been made to regulate the DRC's dangerous artisanal mining sector. The country has been the top producer of the metal for some time, and is likely to remain crucial to the cobalt market for the foreseeable future. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is by far the world’s largest producer of cobalt, accounting for roughly 70 percent of global production.
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