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Cobalt is a by-product: it comes up because somebody wanted the copper. It leaves the DRC as a hydroxide filter cake on a truck, crosses two borders, sails to China, and is refined into the sulfate that goes into a cathode. The route is long, and the due-diligence obligations attached to it are the strictest of any material in this atlas.
- المادة
- Cobalt
- النوع
- Heterogenite, cobalt oxide ore, recovered alongside copper
- حيث يبدأ
- Democratic Republic of the Congo — Kolwezi, where roughly three-quarters of the world's cobalt originates
خطوة خطوة، وحدًّا حدًّا
Democratic Republic of the Congo · Kolwezi and the Lualaba belt بحوزة Industrial operators and artisanal miners (شركة التعدين)
Industrial mines, and a great deal of hand digging
Most cobalt comes from large mechanised copper mines. A material share is also dug by hand by artisanal miners and sold into the same processing plants, which is why chain-of-custody documentation matters here more than anywhere else in this atlas.
لماذا هنا: The Copperbelt. There is no comparable cobalt resource being mined at this scale anywhere else.
Democratic Republic of the Congo · Hydrometallurgical plant بحوزة Operators (كيميائي)
Leached out with the copper
Cobalt dissolves in the same acid leach as the copper, then is separated and precipitated as a hydroxide once the copper has been electrowon out.
ما الذي جرى للباقي: If the copper price falls far enough to close the mine, the cobalt stops too. Its supply follows copper economics, not its own.
لماذا هنا: It shares a circuit with the copper because it shares an orebody with it.
Tanzania · To Dar es Salaam or Durban بحوزة Hauliers (متداول)
The long haul
Bagged hydroxide is trucked 2,000 km or more to a port, crossing at least one border. Queues at the crossings routinely add days.
لماذا هنا: There is no railway that does this job reliably. The road IS the supply chain.
China · Zhejiang and Jiangxi refineries بحوزة Refiner (المكرِّر)
Into a battery-grade salt
Redissolved, purified of nickel, copper, iron and manganese, and crystallised into cobalt sulfate heptahydrate — pink crystals to a very tight specification.
لماذا هنا: This is the real chokepoint. Mining is spread across one country; refining is concentrated in another.
South Korea · Precursor and cathode plants بحوزة Cathode manufacturers (الشركة المصنّعة)
Into the cathode
Co-precipitated with nickel and manganese sulfates into a precursor, then lithiated and calcined. Cobalt is what keeps the cathode's layered structure from collapsing as it charges and discharges.
لماذا هنا: Cathode makers cluster near cell makers, who cluster near carmakers.
Germany · Wherever they are sold بحوزة Drivers (المستخدم النهائي)
About 350 cars
At roughly 13 kg per pack for a mid-nickel chemistry, 4.5 tonnes of cobalt is a few hundred vehicles — and every one of them can be traced back, on paper, to the pit it came from.
ما الذي جرى للباقي: Cathode chemistry has been cutting cobalt for a decade — from a third of the cathode metal to under a tenth in high-nickel designs, and to zero in LFP.
لماذا هنا: Substitution is the quiet counter-pressure on this entire route.
هذا مثال تطبيقي. يتتبّع كمية ابتدائية محددة عبر معدلات عائد واسترداد نموذجية منشورة، مما يجعل النسب قابلة للتحقق؛ وهو ليس سجلاً لشحنة فعلية. وقد جُمعت وقائع المسار — الدول، والعمليات، وأسباب تعذّر معالجة المادة في مكان آخر — من تقارير متاحة للعموم.