Cobalt Metal Slides 9 Percent in a Week as Congo Quota Hopes Fade and Chinese Salts Break Lower
Market Pulse Scope's North American cobalt metal marker fell 9.0% over seven sessions to $35,705 a tonne on Oct 19, as hopes of a further tightening in Congolese export quotas went unmet and Chinese electrolytic cobalt, cobalt sulphate and cobalt chloride all posted weekly losses.
Cobalt is the outlier in an otherwise flat base-metals board. Market Pulse Scope's North America cobalt metal marker dropped from $39,245 a tonne on Oct 12 to $35,705 on Oct 19, a 9.0% fall measured in US dollars per tonne. Nickel, by contrast, held at $15,606.25 a tonne on Oct 20, up 0.5% on the week; copper eased 1.5% to $6.5757 a pound and aluminium was roughly unchanged at $3,033.5 a tonne. Cobalt's slide is therefore idiosyncratic rather than a broad risk-off move across the complex.
The pressure is coming from China, where the whole cobalt chain repriced lower in the week of Oct 12-16. Mysteel data show electrolytic cobalt flake (Co of at least 99.8%) falling from RMB 257,546 to RMB 242,682 a tonne, a weekly drop of 5.8%, with battery-grade cobalt sulphate (Co of at least 20.5%) down 5.3% from RMB 57,000 to RMB 54,000 and crystalline cobalt chloride (Co of at least 24.2%) down 4.3% from RMB 69,000 to RMB 66,000. The Shanghai Metals Market minor-metals quote published on Oct 15 put cobalt (99.8%) at RMB 243,000-265,000 a tonne with a midpoint of RMB 254,000, down RMB 4,500 on the day.
Raw-material economics drove the move. Mysteel reports the payable coefficient on cobalt in mixed hydroxide precipitate and nickel-cobalt intermediates sliding from 63-65% on Sept 21 to 55-58% by Oct 16, which strips cost support out of both cobalt salts and refined metal, while the dollar cobalt metal price fell from $31,598-32,601 a tonne to $26,676-28,131 a tonne over the same window. Demand offered no offset: ternary precursor and 3C electronics buyers stayed on hand-to-mouth purchasing, lithium-iron-phosphate continued to take share from ternary chemistries, and traders chose to liquidate rather than carry stock. Mysteel sees electrolytic cobalt ranging RMB 250,000-280,000 a tonne in October, with cobalt sulphate at RMB 58,000-61,000.
The supply side delivered the opposite of what the market had positioned for. Chinese analysts had flagged the pace of Congo's export-quota enforcement and the possibility of further tightening in the fourth quarter as the key upside variable; that expectation went unmet, removing the last bullish catalyst and returning the market to a demand-led downtrend. Western capacity is still being rebuilt regardless: Electra Battery Materials partnered with WMC on Oct 13 to finance a restart of the Ontario cobalt sulphate refinery, North America's first and only plant of its kind, after launching an early works programme last year.