Thanks @bluesamurai, best news I've read all day. Always appreciate your excellent posts.
I have a lot in cobalt, and so substitution is always a scary thought. However, what allows me to sleep (reasonably) well at night is simply "following the money". China locking up supply, big-time, two years ago, and VW, and now BMW announcing locking in cobalt supply direct from mines for ten years(!). These players have the best research teams available and have shown their cards.
Cobalt use will drop - NMC 811 etc - but not in smartphones and laptops any time soon (LCO - very dense and safe is still a very large part of current demand, and growing) and when this happens in car batteries it still won't make up for increase in overall cobalt demand. Same goes for recycling. Of course we all know this, but good to re-iterate to ourselves to keep nerves of steel intact will the constant bombardment of battery "breakthroughs".
My belief is that EVERY current, and potential cobalt producer is in contact with buyers at the likes of Unicore, Panasonic, VW, BMW, Tesla + metal funds. These companies have teams who will absolutely have looked atevery potential project in the world, and are asking them all 'when' and 'at what price' can you bring us supply. I think over the next year we'll start to see a lot of deals being done, and I think many of the Australian plays have a chance if they can move fast.
I'm watching the Vale (Canada) stream funding proposal, and BMW deal very closely. Big announcements here, of auto companies/battery companies/cathode companies putting down big dollars, ESPECIALLY in advance in the case of Vale's stream funding initiative, will be...HUGE.
