Fortune Minerals : COBALT NEWS

Quillette - June 4, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the world economy in ways that will be debated by pundits and future historians for decades to come. ...

dominance in rare earth minerals. The global market for cobalt is expected to double by 2025 and has launched a new 'scramble for Africa,'

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the world economy in ways that will be debated by pundits and future historians for decades to come. Yet, as hard as it is to predict a disrupted future accurately, the pandemic (not to mention its probable successors) looks likely to produce clear economic winners and losers…But it's not just the tech oligarchs who have benefited from the pandemic disruption. Companies that keep the basic economy functioning-firms dealing in logistics, for example, or critical metals or food processing-have become, if anything, even more important…And although the developing world has been hit hard by declines in tourism and investment, mining giants such as Glencore are investing billions to challenge China's market dominance in rare earth minerals. The global market for cobalt is expected to double by 2025 and has launched a new 'scramble for Africa,' which is also raising moral questions about whether or not the green oligarch's love of the planet outweighs human rights abuses such as the practice of child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo…The biggest winners may also include companies that dominate the tangible economy, not by brokering but by producing. After all, demand for food-notably from China-as well as steel, glass, and selected minerals-notably those used for computers, solar panels, and electric vehicles-has soared. The shift of people to the suburbs and exurbs has pushed up the demand for things like wood products and concrete to high levels. The experiences with degraded supply chains-most poignantly, the reliance of Western nations on Chinese medical supplies-has sparked greater interest in manufacturing in the US, which is now expanding more rapidly than in almost four decades. This has led to a rare moment of consensus as evidenced by the nearly unanimous passage of the 'Buy America Act.' Concern is most marked in medical equipment. Even as the pandemic was shutting some sectors down, growth in medical products, materials for protective barriers, and personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gowns, gloves, and masks, helped manufacturing grow by 700,000 jobs by June 2020, after hitting a decade-long low earlier in the pandemic…For now, China and the other quasi-Confucian states in East Asia have emerged from the pandemic relatively well positioned. Although it was likely the source of the virus, China's authoritarian controls appear to have successfully crushed its epidemic. China emerged from the pandemic first among the major countries, and its productive power does not depend on whether a sale is made by Amazon, Shopify, or a high street shop. China also retains an almost monopoly position on the EV battery supply chain, including control of 80 percent of the world's raw material refining, 77 percent of the world's cell capacity, and 60 percent of the world's component manufacturing. China's 2049 aim to dominate the supply chains and become a global superpower seems more coherent than Western governments' vague dream of 'building back better.' Prospects may be better for those countries with the richest resources, particularly those with minerals like cobalt, lithium, and manganese that power the batteries essential to the digital and green economies. Yet a dependence on commodities also threatens a return to the old colonial patterns of resource dependency, with China increasingly replacing Europe and the United States as the supplier of goods and sophisticated services.