Fortune Minerals Limited. T.FT

Rumours of cobalt’s death are greatly exaggerated

[Allman]

... Western consumers want to know where their cobalt comes from, and they want to know the conditions under which it was extracted or processed.

The emergence of the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) has prompted change in strategic investment patterns among global EV and battery makers by introducing strict requirements over geographic sourcing of raw materials. ...

these changes will lead to a global race for IRA-compliant supply and in the next two to three years, things will look very different.

“The industry is now pivoting away from entities of concern and what we’re seeing today is pricing for IRA and EU compliance delivery of cobalt getting premiums on a shipment-by-shipment basis,”

“In the next two to three years we will start to see two cobalt markets.

“One will be the base metal market or if you like, the China price, where the origin of the metal doesn’t matter and the other market will be the Western world price, with all ESG and CO2 certificates associated with that.

“In other words, metal that is currently mined in Africa and put through Chinese production is not fungible into Western markets – it may as well be a different metal.”

https://stockhead.com.au/resources/rumours-of-cobalts-death-are-greatly-exaggerated-heres-why/