The Truth About AUZ = The real question “is whether we can...

The Truth About AUZ =
The real question “is whether we can access it quickly enough? "
= Yes, AUZ is ready to mine.



The Truth About the Cobalt Crisis: It’s Not a Crisis, Yet

Cobalt supplies will not be a showstopper for electric vehicles, an expert says.

by Jason Deign
October 18, 2017

Photo Credit: Volkswagen

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Volkswagen’s failure to secure long-term cobalt supplies has highlighted concerns over one of the most precarious elements in the lithium-ion battery supply chain.

There is sufficient cobalt worldwide to meet foreseeable demand for the mineral, according to Caspar Rawles, an analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. The real question “is whether we can access it quickly enough,” he said.

Volkswagen last month sought to secure a €50 billion ($59 billion) contract to supply enough cobalt for 150 gigawatt-hours of lithium-ion battery storage by 2025, which Rawles said could amount to roughly 30,000 tons of the metal a year.

“To put that into perspective, the refined material supply globally for cobalt last year was 93,000 tons,” he said. “It’s approximately a third of last year’s entire global supply. When you look at it like that, you start to think there are potentially problems going forward.”

The German carmaker failed to find a supplier that would guarantee even five years of cobalt at a fixed price, the Financial Times reported this week. But that possibly says more about market dynamics than the possibility of a supply-chain breakdown.

“Perhaps they underestimated the market,” said Rawles. “The big auto manufacturers have for years been able to put quite stringent terms [on] the material they need for traditional vehicles. But when demand is expected to grow, producers don’t want to sign those long-term deals.”  



https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-truth-about-the-cobalt-crisis#gs.O2L0zvc