Cobalt oxides & hydroxides

Primary uses. lithium-ion battery cathodes; superalloys for aerospace engines; catalysts.

The chain — from the ground to the buyer

A critical material passes through distinct stages, and the country that leads each stage is often different — that gap is what this atlas exists to show. Each layer comes from a different public source with its own vintage, labelled below; shares are % of the world total.

● Reserves — where it could come from

Reserves are the deposits known to exist and economically worth mining — the long-run ceiling on supply, distinct from what is actually produced today. Cobalt oxides & hydroxides's reserves are moderately concentrated: 🇨🇩 Congo [DRC] holds the most (55%), ahead of 🇦🇺 Australia (15%) and 🇨🇺 Cuba (5%). At today's extraction rate the known reserves would last roughly 48 years, so scarcity is not the binding constraint — access, capital and processing capacity are. USGS 2024 · reserves as of 2023

● Mined — where it is dug up today

Mining is where ore leaves the ground — the stage most people equate with “the source”, though it is rarely where the supply risk actually concentrates. Output is highly concentrated: 🇨🇩 Congo [DRC] supplies 74%, with 🇮🇩 Indonesia (7%) next. That is effectively a single-country dependence — one government's policy or one region's disruption can move the entire upstream. BGS World Mineral Statistics · mine production, 2000–2024 (USGS-validated)

● Refined / processed — where it becomes usable metal

Refining / processing converts ore into the metal or compound buyers actually purchase; it concentrates in fewer hands than mining and sits at the buyer's doorstep, which is why it is usually the true chokepoint. 🇨🇳 China processes 82% — highly concentrated. So although 🇨🇩 Congo [DRC] mines the most, China controls processing: the dependency the mine map hides, and the reason import-origin statistics misread the real source. On the buffers: 22% of supply is recovered from end-of-life recycling and substitutes are scarce, while the US imports 67% of what it consumes. BGS World Mineral Statistics 2024

● Recycling & substitutability — the mitigants (EU CRM)

22% of supply comes from recycling end-of-life products — a meaningful secondary source that lowers the supply-risk score. Substitutability is high — few or no alternatives, so a disruption bites hard.

● Traded — who ships it

Actual bilateral trade of the traded form, reconciled from UN Comtrade / CEPII BACI. Pick a year below — 2018–2024 measured, 2025* nowcast, 2026** directional scenario. The full 2002–2026 range is on the interactive atlas.

Context

The refined-cobalt dependency (the metal alone is diversified): China refines ~62% of the EU's cobalt-oxide imports - the battery-cathode precursor. The naive view blames Belgium (~43%, Umicore's refining/clearing hub); the refined-product origin is China, while the MINE origin is DR Congo (~76% of world cobalt mining) - the trade ledger shows the refiner, not the mine.

Every figure on this page is computed from out/data.json and out/flows_2024.json by build_profiles.py — no hand-entered numbers.