A number of metals are crucial components in a range of technologies, from smartphone batteries to electric cars. So could a market shortage and spiralling prices put the breaks on the global tech industry?
Cobalt has been used for thousands of years to give a deep blue-ish hue to pottery, paint and jewellery. But more recently, it has become a crucial metal used in the batteries powering millions of tech gadgets, including the electric cars made by Tesla and others.
About half of all cobalt demand comes from the expansion of electric vehicle production and development worldwide.
The problem is, we can't get enough of it. No wonder its price has doubled in the last year alone.
"We are definitely entering a period of deficit and that will start this year," says Lara Smith, managing director of Core Consultants, a commodities researcher.
"In 2016, the supply of cobalt was about 104,000 tonnes and demand was about 103,500. The hybrid and electric vehicles are in a nascent growth phase, so as we continue along this track we expect there to be a greater and greater deficit."
Only 2% of cobalt is mined directly - 98% of it is produced as a by-product of nickel and copper mining. Unlike other battery metals like lithium, cobalt is quite rare and its quality can vary geographically. About two thirds of the supply comes from Africa's Congo region.
It's little wonder then that First Cobalt Corporation in Toronto recently invested in seven large areas of land in the Central African "copperbelt" with the intention of finding more copper and cobalt reserves in the ground.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday June 14 2017, @12:23PM (6 children)
A mineral that up until very recently was of very little use, so much so that nobody actually went out of their way to mine it, is now useful and we are likely to start mining for it. You should invest in the advertised mineral mining company now, as they would really like your money, so they can make great big piles of cash by exploiting the natural resources of a region they dare not name their corporation after.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 14 2017, @12:52PM (5 children)
Its been in demand since WWII for high speed steel tools. Its never really been useless and has always been horrendously expensive. If it were cheap, all steels (or at least cutting tool steels) would have cobalt in them.
Figure a lathe blank (a little square thingy) in M42 high cobalt steel is like $20 where plain HSS is like $5. Figure as a rule of thumb adding 10% cobalt quadruples the price of steel but makes a sharp edge last maybe 10 times longer so it makes economic sense most of the time for industry use.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday June 14 2017, @01:07PM (3 children)
That's still very little use when you compare it to other minerals. They wouldn't be processing it at all if it wasn't of some use, but the market, for example, for Lithium is about 185,000 tons [ft.com] and they expect that to rise too. I shudder to think just how much Iron is knocking about, or Aluminium.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 14 2017, @01:47PM (2 children)
Eh true, but if it had no uses it would be cheaper than lead and its about 80% to 90% the density of lead, so you'd have, like cobalt window well weights and stuff like that. Or cobalt weight lifting plates maybe. Cobalt sailboat ballast...
The demand has always been high enough for exotic steel to make the cobalt price pretty ridiculous. So if adding 10% cobalt adds three times the price of HSS steel, that would imply ten times as much added cobalt aka pure cobalt would be thirty times the cost of regular HSS and HSS is more expensive than plain old steel but not ridiculously so... I'd figure a bar of solid pure cobalt is about forty times the price of a similar bar of general purpose steel.
If cobalt were cheap, which it has never been, I wonder if you made an engine block out of cobalt steel and properly heat treated it, how long the engine would last... I suppose the piston rings would wear out unless made of the same material. Maybe you could get a million miles out of a cobalt steel car engine. Of course it would be really heavy...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 14 2017, @02:08PM (1 child)
Marginally heavier, cobalt is just one place to the right from iron in the periodic table.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 14 2017, @02:55PM
My first car had 80s Trenton Michigan cast iron 4-cyl that weighed about 400 pounds and output around 80 HP and my second car had 90s Saturn aluminum engine and that weighed 190 pounds and output a bit over 120 HP. My current car outputs about 90 HP and weighs 69 Kg which is about 150 pounds. I wonder if I'll ever drive a car again with an engine that weighs more than me... Interestingly the MPG achieved by these similar cars has dropped continuously as the mass of safety gear increases. My Horizon had no AC and no air bags and occasionally got 37+ on the highway when the carburetor choke wasn't stuck on, and when I filled my car this morning I got 240 miles in 8 gallons which is 30 MPG. Of course the Horizon was burning pure gasoline and today its all E10...
Interesting to consider, presumably a cobalt steel engine could be run a lot harder and faster so for a given power output the system might be lighter even if the parts are denser...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 14 2017, @02:03PM
Cobalt is also the binding matrix in tungsten carbide tools. Basically without Cobalt the machining industry would be severely crippled.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @12:30PM
Just buy it from Shao Kahn.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday June 14 2017, @12:33PM (3 children)
Africa is gonna be this centuries middle east.
Its very interesting to compare modern colonialism action like in the "Empire of Dust" documentary to experiences in the middle east about a century ago.
They've got "our" natural resources so we gotta go over there and take 'em. Natives that cooperate get rich plus or minus funding anti colonial terror groups (think Saudi Arabia) or natives that don't cooperate get killed.
Note this is not limited to cobalt or underground stuff. Back in the good old days, when everyone (and I mean everyone) was better off, Rhodesia was the breadbasket of a continent. Today, of course, they starve. Well that's politics for you. But when colonial powers like China or whats left of the west need farm land, they'll know where to get some. People get confused, Africa the geographic landmass could easily feed the world, Africans the people need food aid from the west or they starve. Just because the continent starves today so we occasionally ship them food, doesn't mean that "under new management" that land couldn't be a massive food exporter.
If we (as in the west) don't take it, the Chinese are already there, already taking it. So there's that.
China is like the west a century (or two) ago complete with victorian era sensibilities about colonialism and crazy debt fueled economic binges, but without the toxic progressism-as-a-religion. They're gonna hit the wall like the west did WRT colonialism and economic collapse due to debt like the great depression and numerous other fun things, and how China reacts to that will influence how they react toward Africa which will influence how much cobalt the west gets from Africa.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 14 2017, @12:58PM (2 children)
This may be, but another thing is certain: it won't be USA to pull the ropes in their interest, it will be China.
That train has already left for the West.
China is investing in Africa [google.com] for some 10 years now [wikipedia.org]. especially in infrastructure for cheaper resources type of projects [wikipedia.org].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @03:37PM (1 child)
I remember the 2nd time that Top Gear went to Africa and they were commenting on the suddenly nice roads that they were driving on after being on dirt just a few miles before. According to the presenters a Chinese firm had built the highway in exchange for mineral rights or such in that region.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday June 14 2017, @04:08PM
Also the road infrastructure helps ship the mined minerals out quickly and effectively. They would have had to build them anyway if they wanted to transport stuff in and out. So a win win for them.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 14 2017, @12:44PM (2 children)
No asteroid with this material?
Oh btw.. Recycling anyone?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 14 2017, @02:43PM (1 child)
Oh, if it's cobalt what you are after, you can't recycle just anyone and be done with it.
You'll have to recycle those who actually contain cobalt in more than traces amount.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday June 14 2017, @03:04PM
We need to recycle rich people, as you know it's the cobalt that gives them the blue blood.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:25AM
late to the party, just looked up the spot metal price for Cobalt --
http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/cobalt/ [infomine.com]
over the last 12 years it's mostly been around USD $10 - $15/pound with a spike in 2008 up to $50/pound. Current price $26/pound and futures are rising -- matches tfa which suggests electric cars are increasing demand.
Same page has a table of the price of different steel alloying elements -- most in per Kg, but Cobalt is per pound and the raw iron is per TON (iron ore is really cheap!) --
Steel Raw Material Prices chg|%
Cobalt USD/lb 25.85 0.23
Ferro Chrome USD/kg 2.29 0.00
Ferro Titanium USD/kg 3.58 0.00
Ferro Tungsten USD/kg 25.55 0.00
Ferro Vanadium USD/kg 21.14 0.00
Iron Ore Fines USD/t 67.56 0.00
Iron Ore Pellets USD/t 95.30 0.00
Manganese USD/kg 1.97 0.00
Molybdenum Oxide USD/lb 7.94 0.00
Nickel USD/lb 3.96 -0.10
Tin USD/lb 8.73 0.03
Zinc USD/lb 1.11 -0.03
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:13AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Thursday June 15 2017, @04:23AM
(Score: 1) by dr_barnowl on Thursday June 15 2017, @08:41AM
No cobalt! And maybe you can even make it with no lithium, out of cheap and plentiful sodium.
Just downloaded their paper (free with registration) [rsc.org], no mention of cobalt in it.