The meeting of battery materials market participants at Antaike's Battery Materials conference in Guiyang, China, came just as news broke of Glencore's plan to put one of its copper-cobalt mines on care and maintenance - Fastmarkets covers the Chinese market reaction and other topics of discussion at the conference on August 7-8.
Cobalt sulfate trading pauses on big gap between offers, bids It was during the annual midyear meeting in Guiyang that news came of Glencore, the world's largest cobalt miner, shutting down its Mutanda copper-cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by the end of 2019 for two years due to persistently low cobalt prices. Cobalt sulfate producers in China responded by making aggressive offers but trades have been thin due to the huge gap between producers' offers and buyers' bids. Neither party expects any deals to be concluded this week at the earliest. "There is no point making offer given the sharp turn, which consumers will not immediately digest," a producer said. "It is traders who are mostly interested in stockpiling materials, but their bids can't match producers' expectations at this stage either." Another key reason why producers are reluctant to make offers is that they are waiting...