Cobalt intermediate products continued to exhibit strength this week. On the supply side, after a small amount of spot transactions were concluded at $25.0/lb previously, offer prices attempted to move higher, but no high-priced deals were concluded. On the demand side, smelters incurred losses and only made sporadic restocking for rigid demand. Regarding export policies, before New Year's Day, the DRC issued a policy clarifying that 2025 quotas can be extended until the end of March 2026, alleviating market concerns that 2025 quotas would be directly reclaimed. However, this also indicated sluggish export progress. Based on the current export situation of miners, the earliest bulk arrival of DRC intermediate products in China would be after April 2026. In the short term, the logic of structurally tight domestic raw material supply remains unchanged, providing solid support for prices.
SMM New Energy Research Team
Cong Wang 021-51666838
Rui Ma 021-51595780
Disheng Feng 021-51666714
Yanlin Lü 021-20707875
Wenhao Xiao 021-51666872
Haohan Zhang 021-51666752
Zihan Wang 021-51666914
Jie Wang 021-51595902
Yang Xu 021-51666760
Lianting Yang 021-51595835
Zhaoyu Wang 021-51666827
