Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Global and China Cobalt Industry Report, 2016-2020” report to their offering.
China is the world’s largest cobalt consumer as well. Its consumption grew 14.9 percent year on year to 43,500 tons in 2015, mainly thanks to the growth in the battery material consumption. By contrast, the demand for hard alloy, superalloy and magnetic materials remained relatively stable. In 2015, China consumed 33,500 tons of battery-use cobalt, accounting for 77.0 percent of the total cobalt consumption, far more than other industries. Conservatively, the proportion of Chinese battery-use cobalt is expected to reach 79 percent with 56,900 tons by 2020.
Chinese cobalt producers focus on cobalt smelting, represented by Huayou Cobalt, Jinchuan Group, Green Eco-manufacture Hi-tech, Jinling Mining, Huaze Nickel & Cobalt Metal and so on. In recent years, despite the low cobalt price and mining resource restrictions, the market of ternary materials and other new energy vehicle-use battery materials continues to heat up. In view of this, major manufacturers further expand the industrial chain and accelerate layout of downstream ternary materials and other emerging industries to enhance market competitiveness.
In 2015, the global refined cobalt output was 98,000 tons, up 6.9 percent year on year; meanwhile, the demand jumped 9.9 percent year on year to 89,000 tons. The oversupply existed.
In future, the global cobalt demand growth will be much faster than the supply growth with the expected gap of around 1,000 tons in 2020, as the demand for new energy vehicle-use batteries escalates, Congo and other cobalt giants change policies as well as copper-nickel mines are shut down due to price pressures.
China is the world’s largest producer of refined cobalt, and contributed 49.7 percent to the global output in 2015. But, China’s cobalt mineral resources account for only 1 percent of the world and it depends on the import of cobalt concentrate. In 2015, China’s import volume of cobalt concentrate rose 18.4 percent year on year to 227,700 tons.
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