Swiss Glencore Plc has hinted plans to reopen the world’s biggest cobalt mines in Democratic Republic of Congo. This follows a meeting that was held by Congo’s new mines minister, Antoinette N’Samba Kalambayi and representatives from the Swiss company to discuss the restart of the mine, which closed in 2019.
Located in the Katanga province, the Mutanda Mining project is a large-scale copper and cobalt mine which produces copper cathodes and cobalt hydroxide. It was responsible for a fifth of global cobalt production in 2018, according to Darton Commodities Ltd., a U.K.-based firm that specializes in the metal.
Demand for battery metals
The mine was closed for care and maintenance purposes. Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg decided to suspend operations at the mine as a result of increased costs, decreased cobalt prices and higher taxes. The reopening comes when there’s renewed demand for battery metals as automakers focus on metal-intensive electric vehicles and global economies shift away from fossil fuels in favor of cleaner technologies that use electricity for energy. Critical to the construction of batteries, cobalt has become central to some of the industries set to determine the future.
While copper is a key material for the power and construction industries, cobalt hydroxide is a vital material for the electric vehicle sector. Featuring five copper production lines and three cobalt hydroxide lines, the Mutanda mine reported production of 103,200t of copper and 25,100t of cobalt hydroxide in 2019.
