Cobalt Market 2016: Global Industry Size, Share, Growth and Forecast to 2020

For DISCOUNT http://www.chinamarketresearchreports.com/contacts/inquiry.php?name=115356 In future, the global cobalt demand growth will be much faster than the supply growth with the expected gap of around 1,000 tons in 2020, as the demand for new energy vehicle-use batteries escalates, Congo and other cobalt giants change policies as well as copper-nickel mines are shut down due to price pressures. China is the world's largest producer of refined cobalt, and contributed 49.7% to the global output in 2015. But, China’s cobalt mineral resources account for only 1% of the world and it depends on the import of cobalt concentrate. In 2015, China’s import volume of cobalt concentrate rose 18.4%year on year to 227,700 tons. China is the world's largest cobalt consumer as well. Its consumption grew 14.9% year on year to 43,500 tons in 2015, mainly thanks to the growth in the battery material consumption. By contrast, the demand for hard alloy, superalloy and magnetic materials remained relatively stable. In 2015, China consumed 33,500 tons of battery-use cobalt, accounting for 77.0% of the total cobalt consumption, far more than other industries. Conservatively, the proportion of Chinese battery-use cobalt is expected to reach 79% with 56,900 tons by 2020. Chinese cobalt producers focus on cobalt smelting, represented by Huayou Cobalt, Jinchuan Group, Green Eco-manufacture Hi-tech, Jinling Mining, Huaze Nickel & Cobalt Metal and so on. In recent years, despite the low cobalt price and mining resource restrictions, the market of ternary materials and other new energy vehicle-use battery materials continues to heat up. In view of this, major manufacturers further expand the industrial chain and accelerate layout of downstream ternary materials and other emerging industries to enhance market competitiveness. Huayou Cobalt has the cobalt smelting capacity of about 16,000 tons as China's largest cobalt supplier. In 2014, it began to develop ternary cathode materials and cooperated with a number of well-known cathode material manufacturers such as LG, POSCO and GS in certification. The company expects that its ternary precursor sales volume will reach 8,000-9,000 tons in 2016. Green Eco-manufacture Hi-tech, a leading Chinese enterprise in renewable resources, held about 15,000 tons of cobalt metal in 2015. In recent years, the company has actively deployed the ternary material industry. By the end of 2015, the company had been able to produce 5,000 tons of nickel, cobalt and manganese (NCM) ternary material precursors and 2,000 tons of spherical cobalt hydroxide annually.