Manufacturers are accelerating cobalt “de-cobaltization” since Prices soar by 190%, “Cobalt Grandma” shows her power: cobalt price incrase too much manufacturer are accelerating its “de-cobaltization”Recently, the news that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has suspended all processing and sales activities of cobalt minerals extracted by hand has added fuel to the rising cobalt prices in 2025.
cobalt price incrase too much manufacturers are accelerating its “de-cobaltization”
According to Wind data, on December 31, 2025, the average cobalt price in China reached 490,000 yuan/ton, marking a further increase from the previous trading day and hitting a new high since the second half of 2022. Since 2025, the cobalt price has risen by 190%.
Wang Zhaoyu, a senior cobalt analyst at SMM, told Time Finance that since the implementation of the cobalt export ban in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in February 2025, the domestic cobalt raw material supply pattern has undergone a fundamental reversal, shifting from structural surplus to persistent shortage. He further analyzed that the root cause of this round of price increase lies in policy constraints on the supply side. The annual export quota of 96,600 tons for the DRC in 2026-2027 has been confirmed, representing a decrease of more than 50% compared to the production of about 220,000 tons in 2024.
“This fundamentally determines that the global cobalt market will be in a structural shortage state in the next two years, but with the increase in recycling proportion, this shortage state will also be continuously alleviated,” Wang Zhaoyu analyzed.
In addition, the prices of lithium carbonate and sulfuric acid have also seen significant increases since 2025. As a result, lithium cobaltate, which is used as a cathode material in consumer batteries, and cobalt sulfate, which is used in the production of ternary precursor materials for lithium batteries, have risen strongly driven by cost factors, with annual increases of over 150% and 248%.
In the future, the new materials will be replaced for cobalt, ,many manufactures are focus on using other materials to replace the cobalt materails step by step!
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