Could you cope with smartphone rationing?By Ian Hardy
Technology of Business reporter
13 June 2017
The use of child labour at cobalt mines has attracted criticism from human rights groups Getty ImagesA number of metals are crucial components in a range of technologies, from smartphone batteries to electric cars. So could a market shortage and spiralling prices put the brakes on the global tech industry?
Cobalt has been used for thousands of years to give a deep blue-ish hue to pottery, paint and jewellery. But more recently, it has become a crucial metal used in the batteries powering millions of tech gadgets, including the electric cars made by Tesla and others.
About half of all cobalt demand comes from the expansion of electric vehicle production and development worldwide.
The problem is, we can't get enough of it. No wonder its price has doubled in the last year alone.
"We are definitely entering a period of deficit and that will start this year," says Lara Smith, managing director of Core Consultants, a commodities researcher.
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Only 2% of cobalt is mined directly - 98% of it is produced as a by-product of nickel and copper mining. Unlike other battery metals like lithium, cobalt is quite rare and its quality can vary geographically. About two thirds of the supply comes from Africa's Congo region.
It's little wonder then that First Cobalt Corporation in Toronto recently invested in seven large areas of land in the Central African "copperbelt" with the intention of finding more copper and cobalt reserves in the ground.
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"To bring up a mine to full production can take up to 10 years."
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Efforts to mine cobalt in North America are under way, but any increase in US and Canadian production is expected to be small compared with future anticipated demand globally.
And the Congo mining region has also been under scrutiny as it deals with accusations of child labour and other human rights abuses, summarised in an Amnesty International report last year.
In other words, ramping up supply could take quite some time.
And this shortage in the supply of tech-dependent metals is not limited to cobalt.
Many modern electronics rely on so-called "technology metals" - neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium to name but a few - which make them faster, lighter, stronger, and more energy efficient.
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These rare earth metals along with minor metals such as lithium and tantalum are now just as important as the traditional base metals and precious metals.
"The colour red on a MacBook Pro screen is made from europium; the colour green is because of a metal called terbium; touch screen technology relies on indium," explains David Abraham, author of a book called The Elements of Power.
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Unlike cobalt, most other technology metals are not rare. It's getting them out of the ground and in to manufacturing locations that's tricky.
Again, most are by-products of other base metal mining activity and involve additional complex chemical extraction processes.
China dominates the mining and production of many technology metals, due in part to weak environmental codes. It produces 100% of the world's dysprosium for example.
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"There was a major price spike in some of these materials," says Gareth Hatch, co-founder of consultancy group Technology Metals Research.
"Some went up anywhere from 300% to 1,000% in price for a variety of reasons, and that alerted everyone to the fact that we are dependent on these materials and they are all coming from China - and that could be a problem."
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One way of breaking China's stranglehold is to recycle the materials.
Apple is a leader in this field, marshalling a line of robots called Liam to disassemble used iPhones in a few seconds, enabling recovery and reuse of many of the materials used, such as cobalt, indium and gold.
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