"If you do a simple calculation on cost, you will see it isn’t going to happen," an executive from a large cobalt refinery in China said.
Batteries are the major driver of cobalt consumption and they are quite sensitive to cost, as one trader pointed out.
"The complete replacement of cobalt intermediates by cobalt metal as the raw materials for tolling is quite hard to achieve under current conditions," another source from a trading company said.
"It requires both investment and techniques to refine ores into metal, and with existing facilities and technologies in DRC and Zambia, it is impossible for them to export cobalt metal directly," he added.
Nevertheless, many sources have reached a consensus that from the perspective of environmental protection and commodity value, it is inevitable that cobalt metal will become a mainstream feed for cobalt downstream. The question is how long it will take.
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