2021 was the year that hype turned to reality for the cobalt market, writes Benchmark analyst Greg Miller.
The ground was set in late December 2020, when China’s State Reserve Bureau (SRB) initiated a second round of stockpiling - taking an estimated 3,000 tonnes of cobalt metal out of the market over the first six months of 2021. This occurred just when surging demand from the battery industry and seasonal restocking ahead of the Chinese . . .