June 6, 2023. Whether you know it or not, much of your life is powered by Congolese cobalt—and by the people who mine it. There's a little piece of cobalt in nearly every smartphone, tablet, and laptop. That makes cobalt indispensable to global tech and manufacturing companies. But cobalt extraction is a major driver of human rights abuses.

Each shop has a handwritten board listing the going rate for cobalt and copper. At a shop named Louis 14, the price list offered the equivalent of $881 for a ton of 16 percent cobalt rock. Rock ...

- The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was the world's largest cobalt producer in 2021, responsible for over 70% of the global mine cobalt supplies. Mine cobalt production in DRC increased by 22.4% to 120,000 tonnes. According to the preliminary data released by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), estimated global mine cobalt …

Indonesia became second largest cobalt producer in 2022. Indonesia accounts for nearly 5% of global cobalt production today, surpassing established producers like Australia and the Philippines. In ...

Late last year, the company purchased a stake in another cobalt ore project in DRC, where a mine holds an estimated 3.1 million metric tons of the metal. The sales of cobalt for the firm increased ...

Mining data, statistics and analysis. In 2022, Canada produced more than 3,000 tonnes of cobalt with 40% from Ontario and the rest from Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, and Quebec. Canada's cobalt and cobalt product exports were valued at $793.2 million in 2022. All of Canada's current cobalt production is as a secondary …

During the mine visit, the group passed kids—some looked barely past adolescence—digging in piles of discarded mining by-products, known as tailings, or carrying sacks of a cobalt ore called ...

bags of high-grade cobalt ore out of hand- dug tunnels and pits, women washing that ore, and children picking through or trans-porting the washed ore (10). Since 2000, research on artisanal cobalt mining has revealed exploitative practices, human rights abuses, and child labor (10– 12). This has led many to call for the removal of cobalt from

Historical cobalt stocks and flows at global and regional scales. The global anthropogenic cobalt cycle (Fig. 1) includes five transformation processes: mining, refining, manufacturing, use, and ...

A third of global cobalt is used for EV batteries, and more than two-thirds of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. A 2021 study by Bamana et al. reported that 15-20% of Congolese cobalt is sourced from 110,000 to 150,000 artisanal, small-scale miners.The study documents how waste from the small mines and …

INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS. In December 2020, GEM Co. Ltd situated in China signed a long-term extension deal with Glencore for a continuous supply of the cobalt mineral. …

It is estimated that the Copperbelt contains 5 billion tonnes of ore containing 3.3% copper, yielding 185 million tonnes of copper. Industrial-scale mining on the Copperbelt has taken place for over a century. Cobalt is produced as a by-product of this copper mining. However, the increasing demand for energy storage and electric …

The study was widely expected to turn the nickel that IGO and Wyloo will mine into nickel sulphate crystals for battery manufacturers, similar to the product BHP has been selling from Kwinana ...

As much as 30 per cent of Congo's cobalt comes from so-called artisanal mines.(Foreign Correspondent: Michael Davie)But the violent rush to extract cobalt is unleashing a new cycle of misery and ...

For the large-scale copper-cobalt ore mining in the DRC, ... Battery manufacturers could investigate the possibility of sourcing metal supplies with higher recycled contents. Accidents during artisanal cobalt mining in the DRC also contribute notably to the potential health impacts of the studied LIB cell. Sovacool proposed seven …

Copper-cobalt deposits in the Central African Copperbelt belong to the Sediment-Hosted Stratiform Copper (SHSC) type and are situated in the Neoproterozoic Katanga Supergroup. This paper describes in detail the geology, geochemistry and hydrometallurgy of cobalt, with a special focus on the Black Ore Mineralised Zone …

Most major EV manufacturers use cobalt that is at least in part sourced from the Tenke Fungurume mine, according to mapping by Brussels-based Resource Matters, which studies the management and ...

KCC is the largest cobalt-producing mine in the world. Located in the heart of the DRC's Katangan Copperbelt, each year, the mine churns out over 20,000 tons of the silvery metal used in cell ...

Elements used in batteries are assessed using XRF manufacturing process control. Knowing the exact composition of iron ore will tell where to dig and can aid in its refinement. This topic is discussed in the app note Iron ore analysis with the ARL OPTIM'X XRF Spectrometer. The transition metal manganese is particularly critical element in Li ...

Artisanal miners carry sacks of ore at the Shabara artisanal mine near Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Oct. 12, 2022. Some 20,000 people work at Shabara in shifts of 5,000 at a time. Junior ...

Cobalt extraction routes can be in the form of open-pit mining, underground mining or a combination of open-pit and underground mining depending on ore grade, size and surface type. These two mining methods can be employed separately or combined depending on the body or deposit type, which may contain significant amounts of cobalt.

Given that more than half the world's cobalt comes from the DRC, that one fifth of it is extracted by artisanal (or informal) miners, and that around 40,000 children work in southern DRC where the cobalt is mined, there's a chance that our phones contain child labour. Yet phone manufacturers – global brands including Apple and Samsung ...

In 2022, the Metalkol RTR Project mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) was by far the leading mine worldwide in terms of cobalt production, with an estimated output of 57,060 metric ...

In fact, almost all cobalt produced today — 98% — is a byproduct of mining and refining those two important industrial metals. Cobaltite, one of the many ores of cobalt. Source: James St. John ...

Cobalt mining companies dig hundreds of feet under the earth to collect cobalt. Cobalt is used in many products, including superalloys, magnets, catalysts, jet turbines, and lithium-ion batteries. …

Glencore is the world's largest cobalt-producing mining company by a long shot, achieving estimated total production of 25,320 …

The partnership is vertically-integrated, where they mine ore containing cobalt and nickel, then process, refine, and sell it globally; except to the U.S. In 2021, the joint venture produced 3,526 tons of cobalt, contributing to its $110 million revenue. ... (EV) battery manufacturer EVE Energy to build a cobalt and nickel smelting plant in ...

Gécamines once had a monopoly on copper and cobalt mining and, by the 1980s, was among the top copper producers in the world. Jobs there offered a good salary, health care and schooling for ...

Cobalt mining is a fast-growing market due to its versatility in the global energy industry. The critical mineral is a key component in the transition towards renewable energy, providing battery minerals that power electric vehicles (EVs), with modern EVs using lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide batteries with a cathode containing 10%-20% …