| ISSUE 014 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| Cobalt reaches the financial pages as a battery metal: Chinese sulphate prices, Congolese export quotas, electric vehicle chemistry. In the United States its largest use is inside aircraft gas turbine engines. | |
| The US Geological Survey estimated in February 2026 that 51 percent of the cobalt consumed in the United States in 2025 went into superalloys, mainly for those engines, with 25 percent in chemicals and 9 percent in cemented carbides for cutting tools and wear parts. The only cobalt mined domestically that year, about 300 tonnes contained in nickel concentrate from the Eagle Mine in Michigan, was exported to Canada or overseas for processing. | |
| Engine metal has its own gate. In August 2025 the Defense Logistics Agency sought 7,480 tonnes of cobalt over five years for the National Defense Stockpile (USGS, February 2026), specified for rotating aerospace parts. The agency said that application requires qualified sources and identified three, originating in Canada, Japan and Norway (Inside Defense, 14 November 2025). The solicitation was cancelled before the end of 2025 (USGS, February 2026). | |
|
| PLATE · Calera cobalt mine, Blackbird district, Idaho, 1950s |
| Late in 1950 the government asked Calera Mining Company to enlarge the planned capacity of its mine and refinery in the Blackbird district of Lemhi County, Idaho. In 1951 it contracted to buy 6.5 million pounds of cobalt-nickel alloy, at least 93 percent cobalt, at a fixed premium price (US Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 8103, 1962). |
| Concentrate production began in June 1951. The refinery at Garfield, Utah, made no cobalt metal until March 1953 (Bureau of Mines, 1962; Minerals Yearbook 1954). By 1958 the United States produced 4,023,000 pounds of recoverable cobalt in ore and was, for that one year, the world’s second largest producer (Bureau of Mines, 1962). |
| Calera closed permanently in mid-1959 after completing its government deliveries. Price cuts by Union Minière, the Belgian Congo producer, had taken cobalt from $2.60 a pound in 1954 to $1.50 by 1960 (Bureau of Mines, 1962). Government purchasing built the capacity and set its lifespan; the refinery ran as long as the deliveries did. |
| PLATE · Glencore Nikkelverk, Kristiansand, Norway | |||
| Glencore Nikkelverk in Kristiansand, Norway, has refined metals on its site since 1910 and describes itself as the largest nickel refinery in the western world. It exports all of its output, around 50 product variants, mainly nickel, copper and cobalt (Nikkelverk). | |||
| Crushed raw material enters a chlorine leach, where the metals are separated in hydrochloric acid and routed to a cobalt refinery, nickel electrolysis and copper electrolysis. Nikkelverk cut cathode was one of three brands left deliverable under the 2025 stockpile solicitation, after Vale’s Long Harbour rounds were struck out (Fastmarkets, 3 September 2025). Norway supplied 26 percent of US imports of cobalt metal, oxide and salts from 2021 to 2024 (USGS, February 2026). | |||
| Its cobalt line started in July 1952, when Falconbridge Nickel Mines began commercial production of electrolytic cobalt there from matte made at its smelter in Falconbridge, Ontario (US Bureau of Mines, 1962). | |||
|
|||
|
|
|||
| Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence. | |||
| FREE. NO STOCK PICKS. NO PREDICTIONS. | |||
| Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment. |
