Where does cobalt come from?

In 2025 DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) mined 230,000 tonnes of cobalt content, 74% of the world's 310,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Indonesia followed with 14%, then Russia (2.5%), Madagascar (1.3%) and Philippines (1.2%). The top five account for 93%, and only 12 countries mine it at all. Reserves are concentrated in the same place: DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) holds 50% of the world's 12 million tonnes (USGS MCS).

That first share is one of the highest single-country concentrations of any commodity on this site, and it is a geological accident. The Central African Copperbelt running through the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo and into Zambia contains stratiform copper-cobalt deposits of a richness found almost nowhere else, and the cobalt in them is recovered as a by-product of copper. Indonesia's rapid rise is a different story: cobalt recovered from nickel laterite processed by high-pressure acid leach, again as a by-product, this time of the nickel described on the nickel page.

Production means mined cobalt content, not refined metal or chemical. A substantial share of Congolese output leaves the country as cobalt hydroxide, an intermediate, and is refined into sulfate elsewhere, so the refining map differs sharply from the mining map.

Artisanal and small-scale mining supplies a meaningful minority of Congolese output, dug by hand from shallow workings and sold through traders. It is the part of the supply chain that attracts the most scrutiny, because working conditions are poor and child labor has been documented, and it is also the part that responds fastest to price: when cobalt is expensive, artisanal output rises within months.

DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) was the largest exporter of unwrought cobalt and mattes (HS 810520) in 2024 with 65% of world export value, ahead of Canada (5%), on world trade of $4.7 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 68%.

Read that alongside a fact the table cannot show: most Congolese cobalt is exported as hydroxide under a different customs heading, travels by road to ports in South Africa, Tanzania or Namibia, and is refined in China into the sulfate that cathode makers use. China refines the large majority of world cobalt regardless of where it was mined, so the country that dominates refining barely appears in the mining table and the country that dominates mining sells an intermediate rather than a finished product.

The benchmark shown is Cobalt, 99.8% minimum purity, LME spot, which was $55,873/t in July 2026, up 70% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Its nominal high was $95,023/t in March 2008. Note that the IMF publishes this series under a name that says dollars per pound while the underlying description says dollars per tonne; the values are per tonne and this site labels them accordingly.

Cobalt metal trades on the London Metal Exchange in one-tonne lots, but the contract is thin and most physical business is done against private assessments of standard-grade metal and, increasingly, of cobalt sulfate and hydroxide delivered into China. Hydroxide is normally sold at a discount to the metal price expressed as a payable percentage of contained metal, so a producer's realised price depends on a negotiated payability as much as on the headline quotation.

Because cobalt is a by-product, its price does not clear the market the way a primary metal's does. When the price collapses, copper and nickel mines keep producing cobalt anyway because the host metal still pays, and supply barely falls. When it spikes, the only fast supply response is artisanal digging and stockpile release. That asymmetry is why cobalt has some of the most violent price cycles in the metals complex.

Cobalt stabilizes nickel-rich cathodes, but it is the most expensive input, so cell makers have spent a decade reducing the amount used per kilowatt-hour and switching to lithium iron phosphate chemistries that contain none at all. Demand growth therefore lags electric vehicle growth substantially, and a chemistry shift can offset years of vehicle sales growth.

Because cobalt is a by-product, its supply is set by decisions taken for other metals. A copper price high enough to justify Congolese expansion delivers cobalt whether or not cobalt is wanted, and the Indonesian nickel build-out has added cobalt as a side effect. This is the single most important thing to understand about the market.

Royalty changes, an export ban on unprocessed concentrate, state trading arrangements for artisanal material and periodic export quotas have all moved the price. Because one country supplies most of the world's cobalt, a decree in Kinshasa is a global supply event.

High-pressure acid leach plants built for nickel now produce cobalt in volumes that have materially reduced Congolese market share. This is new supply that arrived because of nickel demand, and it is the main reason the market moved into surplus.

Automakers and electronics firms require audited chains of custody that exclude child labor and unregulated artisanal material. Compliance splits the market: audited industrial hydroxide commands a premium and unaudited material sells at a discount into buyers who do not ask, which changes trade routes rather than volumes.

Cobalt is small enough that government stockpiling and trader inventories are large relative to annual consumption. Purchases into a strategic reserve, or a release from one, can move the price without any change in mine output or battery demand.

Cobalt is valuable enough per tonne to justify recovery from spent batteries and superalloy scrap, and recycling rates are higher than for lithium. As the electric vehicle fleet ages, recycled units will supply a growing share and further weaken the link between mine supply and battery demand.

In the Congolese Copperbelt, oxide and mixed ores are mined by open pit, crushed, and leached with sulfuric acid. Copper is recovered by solvent extraction and electrowinning; the cobalt-bearing raffinate is then treated, and cobalt is precipitated as a hydroxide containing perhaps thirty percent cobalt. That hydroxide is the product that leaves the country. At the refinery, usually in China, it is redissolved, purified and crystallized as cobalt sulfate, the form cathode makers use, or reduced to metal.

In Indonesian nickel laterite operations the route is different: ore is leached at high temperature and pressure with sulfuric acid, nickel and cobalt are precipitated together as a mixed hydroxide precipitate, and the two are separated downstream. Cobalt from this route arrives as a small percentage of a nickel-dominated stream.

The third route is the historic one: cobalt recovered from nickel sulfide ores in Canada, Russia, Australia and Finland, where it follows the nickel smelting and refining circuit. It is a small share of world supply now but supplies much of the metal, as opposed to chemical, market.

Artisanal production bypasses most of this. Hand-dug ore is washed, sorted and sold to buying stations, entering the formal chain at the leaching stage. Everything on this page is measured as contained cobalt, so a tonne of hydroxide is not a tonne of cobalt.

Rechargeable batteries take the largest share, principally in nickel-cobalt-manganese and nickel-cobalt-aluminium cathodes for electric vehicles and in lithium cobalt oxide for consumer electronics, where energy density per unit volume matters more than cost. The direction of travel in vehicle cells is toward less cobalt per unit of energy, but portable electronics remain a stable cobalt-intensive market.

Superalloys are the second use and the one with no substitute. Cobalt-based and cobalt-containing alloys retain strength at temperatures that would soften other metals, so they appear in jet engine turbine blades and vanes, gas turbines and turbochargers. Cemented carbides use cobalt as the binder that holds tungsten carbide grains together in cutting tools and mining bits, magnets use it where high-temperature performance is needed, and cobalt compounds serve as catalysts in petroleum desulfurization and in making the terephthalic acid used for polyester. Cobalt blue pigments in ceramics and glass are the oldest use of all.

The chain is a narrow corridor with two chokepoints in different countries. Mined supply is concentrated in the Congo; refining is concentrated in China. Between them sits a long overland haul, because the Congolese Copperbelt is landlocked and material moves by truck for one to two thousand kilometers to ports in South Africa, Tanzania, Namibia or Mozambique before it can be shipped. Road conditions, border delays and periodic customs disputes therefore affect world cobalt availability directly, and truck queues at border posts have been visible in the price.

Refining concentration is the second chokepoint and the reason cobalt appears on critical minerals lists. A buyer wanting battery-grade cobalt sulfate from outside China has limited options, and building alternatives requires not just plants but qualification by cathode makers, which takes years.

The reputational chain is a genuine constraint too. Automakers cannot afford to be linked to child labor, so audited material trades separately from unaudited, and the industry has built traceability schemes to keep them apart. This does not remove artisanal supply from the market; it directs it toward buyers with fewer requirements.

The structural risk is the opposite of scarcity. Indonesian by-product supply plus falling cobalt intensity per battery has pushed the market into surplus, and the danger for producers is a prolonged period of prices too low to justify investment, followed by a shortage when demand for high-nickel cathodes eventually recovers.