China has ample cobalt despite Congo ban, conference delegates say
SINGAPORE, May 15 (Reuters) - Chinese cobalt smelters have ample supplies of the battery-making material despite the export ban imposed by the world's top producer, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in late February, delegates at an industry conference said this week.
Downstream users in China, the top consumer of the metal, have intermediate products stocks that will last between two weeks and six months, Shirley Wang, general manager at Shanghai Metals Market, told Cobalt Congress 2025 in Singapore.
"Large-scale users in China are with six months of stocks, though small-scale companies, with half a month stocks, will have to buy from the spot market at higher prices,' Wang said on Thursday.
Congo imposed its four-month export ban to address global oversupply and revive prices for the metal used in making batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones.
The ban has helped lift cobalt prices to around $16 a pound, from $10 at the end of 2024.
Chinese traders are also well-stocked with cobalt metal, with total volumes equivalent to 12 months of demand, Wang said.
Four delegates from Chinese smelters said on the sidelines of the conference that their cobalt supplies were steady and little affected by Congo's ban.
One of the four delegates said the stockpiles may peak in June, since it typically takes four months for cobalt to reach Chinese ports from mines in Congo.
Patrick Luabeya, head of Congo's regulatory agency for mineral substances, said on Wednesday the country may impose strict curbs on cobalt when the current export ban ends.
"Our ban is to make sure that at the end of the day, supply meets demand, but we have noticed that supply has not been affected to consumers," Congo's mines minister, Kizito Pakabomba, said in an interview at the event.
For 2025, cobalt oversupply is expected to persist, said Wang of Shanghai Metals Market, with total supply up 6% to 327,000 metric tons, driven by cobalt produced as a byproduct from nickel and copper mining.
Wang expects cobalt demand this year of about 237,000 tons, up 0.3% from 231,000 tons last year. Oversupply is likely to persist until at least 2030, she said, with supply at 390,000 tons that year and demand at 264,000 tons.
Indonesia, the second-largest cobalt producer, expects to double its production capacity by 2027 and has no plans to control supply, a senior government official said this week.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
May jobs report shows 139,000 jobs were added last month
Before the report's release, economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimated that 125,000 jobs were added last month. Job gains for March and April were revised down by a combined 95,000, portraying a weaker labor market that believed in late winter and early spring. March's total was downgraded from 185,000 to 120,000 and April's, from 177,000 to 147,000. Is the job market good or bad right now? The labor market has held up remarkably well despite the hurdles posed by Trump's economic policies, with employment gains averaging well over 100,000 a month so far this year. But many forecasters reckoned a more pronounced hiring slowdown took shape in May and would intensify in the months ahead. Trump's trade strategy lies at the center of the projected downshift. He paused the high double-digit tariffs he slapped on dozens of countries in April and in May agreed to slash levies on Chinese imports from 145% to a still-elevated 30%. China agreed to broadly similar concessions. But the moves hinge on further U.S. deals with China and other countries. And 25% tariffs remain in effect on all imported cars and many goods from Canada and Mexico. This week, Trump hiked fees on steel and aluminum imports to 50% from 25%. And while a trade court last month struck down many of Trump's tariffs, they remain in effect during an appeal, prolonging the uncertainty for businesses. Economists expect the duties to reignite inflation within a month or two and dampen consumer spending. The costs also have heightened business uncertainty, curtailing hiring and investment. How many federal employees are laid off? The Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency has cut as many as 120,000 federal jobs but many workers have been placed on administrative leave, leaving them on U.S. payrolls pending court cases, Morgan Stanley said in a report. Still, the reductions have started to filter into the jobs numbers. Goldman Sachs estimates federal employment declined by a relatively modest 10,000 in May, adding to the 26,000 government workers that Capital Economics says already have been chopped since February. Are there still immigrants coming to America? Besides toughening enforcement at the southern border, the administration has canceled or declined to renew work permits and other protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants, economist Lydia Boussour of EY-Parthenon wrote in a note to clients. That will likely mean a smaller labor supply that further constrains hiring, especially in industries such as construction and hospitality, she said. Some calendar quirks also could have suppressed employment last month. For technical reasons, a late Easter likely boosted payrolls in April but heralds a lower tally for May as staffing levels returned to normal, Morgan Stanley said. Yet while hiring generally has slowed, other economists figured job growth remained sturdy last month as companies frustrated by labor shortages during the pandemic continued to curtail layoffs. Capital Economics and Barclays both predicted 150,000 jobs gains for May. By the end of the year, however, Barclays believes tariffs, federal layoffs and immigration curbs will slow average monthly job gains to about 75,000.
The Herald Scotland
6 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Lord Sainsbury: Give Glasgow greater devolved powers
"A major challenge which government faces if it wants to increase Scotland's rate of growth is a way to find and support such clusters," he said. "All the evidence from other countries suggests that the only way to effectively support clusters is to do so at a city region level. Read more: "I appreciate in Scotland, unlike in England, metro mayors have not yet been introduced, but if you want to support high-tech clusters, this is something I think you should seriously consider, with Greater Glasgow being given powers similar to those devolved to Greater Manchester and the West Midlands." Lord Sainsbury was speaking at the Creating the Jobs of Tomorrow conference organised by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, where he was introduced to the stage by former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown. Mr Brown said growth and productivity have been perennial problems in the UK and Scotland, with innovation the key to boosting performance. A new study by economist Dan Turner, head of research at the Centre for Progressive Policy, has suggested this could unlock the creation of hundreds of thousands of high-value jobs. "There are huge sources of innovation and inventiveness in Scotland, just as has been traditional in our history," he said. "The question is can we turn that into scalable companies that stay in Scotland, invest in Scotland, create jobs in Scotland, and Dan's study suggests we could create 300,000 jobs in the next 10 years. "That's 300,000 well-paying jobs, 120,000 in the new industries, the spin-offs in terms of the service sector another 180,000 - that is a possibility if we invest in the infrastructure, the skills, and the development necessary to achieve that." Lord David Sainsbury (Image: Nate Cleary) Lord Sainsbury is a Labour peer and served as minister for science and innovation under Mr Brown and his prime ministerial predecessor, Tony Blair, between 1998 and 2006. He was appointed a life peer in 1997. Lord Sainsbury said there are new opportunities for employment and growth in sectors such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. "There are economists that will argue that it is investment that is the engine of economic growth, but we have to realise today that capital flows easily around the world, and it flows as it has always done, to where the best investment opportunities are created by innovation," Lord Sainsbury said. "You can sit in London today and you can invest in Silicon Valley, you can invest in practically any country - until recently you could even invest in Chinese venture capital - because that is what modern communication enables you to do. That is why investment is not the real driver of the economy, it's innovation." Among the other speakers was Michael Spence, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 for his work in the analysis of markets with information imbalances. Read more: "There are two things that [people] associate with Adam Smith correctly," Mr Spence said. "One the 'invisible hand', which is the market system is a reasonably efficient tool for decentralising and allocating resources. "That actually is not the most important thing that Adam Smith said, but it's the one that neo-conservatives remember because they elevate market systems to the status of a religion, rather than a way of accomplishing economic and social goals. The most important one for our purposes is specialisation. "Adam Smith meant specialisation within an economy, when of course everything that David Sainsbury talked about in the global economy is just the Adam Smith insight writ large, and of course it is the ultimate source of growth. "Without specialisation you don't get scale of spread your activity over too much territory, and you don't get innovation. You get nothing if everybody has to do everything. "The fundamental message I want to deliver today is that's still true, and that growth is fundamentally about specialisation and structural change."
Reuters
7 hours ago
- Reuters
China's forex reserves up $3.6 billion in May, less than expected
BEIJING, June 7 (Reuters) - China's foreign exchange reserves rose by a less-than-expected $3.6 billion in May, official data showed on Saturday, as the dollar continued to weaken against other major currencies. The country's foreign exchange reserves, the world's largest, rose 0.11% to $3.285 trillion last month, below the Reuters forecast of $3.292 trillion. They were $3.282 trillion in April. The increase in reserves was due to "the combined effects of factors such as exchange rate conversion and asset price changes," China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in a statement. The yuan weakened 1.05% against the dollar in May, while the dollar slid 0.23% against a basket of other major currencies .
