EnConsumer electronics manufacturer Apple is looking to directly secure supplies of cobalt, a vital material for lithium ion batteries, Bloomberg reports. As the company has scaled up it faces competition not only from other phone and laptop makers, but importantly also from automotive manufacturers. A similar race to secure supplies can be seen in the lithium market, with both Toyota and Tesla reportedly looking to secure supplies as outlined in Panjiva research of February 8.
A mixture of rising demand and pricing has pushed Chinese imports of cobalt to a repeated series of records, reaching $323 million in December after climbing 236% on a year earlier in the fourth quarter, Panjiva data shows. The challenge for Apple may lie in securing supplies within its ethical policy constraints. With 86.7% of Chinese imports coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there have been provenance concerns regarding local conflicts Reuters reports, that may prove difficult.
Source: Panjiva
