China’s cobalt king hits output goal months ahead of schedule

The world’s No. 1 cobalt miner smashed through its full-year output target last quarter after a speedy ramp-up that’s piled pressure on global prices of the battery material.

CMOC Group Ltd. produced 84,722 tons of cobalt at its mines in Africa in the first nine months of this year, according to the firm’s earnings report late Monday. Its earlier output guidance for all of 2024 was 70,000 tons at the high end.

The faster-than-expected increase has deepened a global cobalt glut and helped send prices tumbling to an eight-year low this month. The Chinese firm passed Glencore Plc last year as the world’s top supplier of the metal used in everything from electric-vehicle batteries to aerospace alloys.

CMOC has been expanding two huge mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where cobalt is extracted as a by-product of mining copper. Its output of the red metal in the first nine months rose 78%, and could hit 600,000 tons for this year “if this pace of production continues,” CMOC said on its official WeChat account.

The miner’s third-quarter net income rose 64% from a year earlier to 2.9 billion yuan ($410 million), largely thanks to the higher copper output and relatively strong global prices of the metal. Revenues rose 16% to 51.9 billion yuan.

CMOC is among several Chinese firms trying to lift output in central Africa’s copper belt. Preliminary exploration work has started for the western area of its Tenke Fungurume mine, and also for phase two of its Kisanfu project, it said.

In a separate statement, CMOC said it has signed a three-year supply and purchase agreement with Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. — the world’s top battery-maker and CMOC’s second-biggest shareholder — for metals including copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium.

CATL bought $546 million worth of products from CMOC in the first eight months of 2024, more than double the volume in all of 2023. CMOC said those were primarily nickel products.