back Looming cobalt market deficit to spur investment interest
August 10, 2015 | Category: Cobalt News
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) - Cobalt has undergone somewhat of a transformation over the past five years, in step with the new emerging applications in the booming battery business that had driven a three-fold demand increase. Despite being a smaller industry than its battery raw material counterparts - roughly half the size of lithium and 20% the size of flake graphite - its use in lithium-ion batteries had rocketed and there were lessons in cobalt that should be taken into the lithium and graphite sectors, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence analyst and MD Simon Moores told Mining Weekly Online. Supply to the 100,000 t/y market was expected to quickly move into deficit with the rise in demand from the battery sector, as a wave of new battery megafactories were expected to come into production over the coming years. "How the industry deals with an expected surge in demand will be critical over the coming years. We expect this to begin in 2016 and is likely to intensify in 2017/18, with limited new supply on the market and battery producers increasing their consumption," Benchmark consultant Andrew Miller explained to Mining Weekly Online.
Please click on the link below to read the full article Henry Lazenby, Creamer Media Deputy Editor North America