Origins — Democratic Republic of the Congo
The best orebodies, and the hardest road out.
Grades here are multiples of the world average and the nearest port is a two-thousand-kilometre truck journey away. Everything commercially distinctive about this origin follows from those two facts.
- Share of world mined cobalt
- About 70%
- Copperbelt head grades
- Multiples of world average
- Distance to the nearest port
- Over 2,000 km by road
- Cobalt export policy
- Quota controlled
Overview
Geology this good, geography this bad.
The Central African Copperbelt is the highest-grade large copper province in the world and the source of roughly seven in ten tonnes of mined cobalt. It is also more than two thousand kilometres from a port, and that single fact shapes every commercial decision made here.
Because road haulage of low-value material is uneconomic, most Congolese copper leaves as finished cathode produced on site by solvent extraction and electrowinning rather than as concentrate. What is bought here is often a finished metal, which changes the counterparty, the financing and the quality risk entirely.
Cobalt is a by-product. Its price is set by copper economics and Chinese refining demand rather than by any discipline among cobalt producers, which is precisely why the state has intervened directly — first through centralised marketing of artisanal material and more recently through an export suspension and a quota system explicitly intended to support the price.
Responsible sourcing is not a compliance afterthought in this origin, it is the central diligence question. Artisanal production is a real share of supply, and the entire architecture of OECD due diligence guidance, traceability schemes and buyer audit programmes exists to keep industrial material separable from it.
Metals desk
Copper cathode, made at the mine because it has to be.
Congolese oxide ore is leached and electrowon on site, producing LME-quality cathode at the mine gate. That is a response to geography as much as to metallurgy: shipping 25% copper concentrate two thousand kilometres by truck means paying to haul three-quarters waste.
Kamoa-Kakula is the exception and the future. It is sulphide ore at grades that are extraordinary by world standards, and it is served by a domestic smelter rather than a truck to the coast. It is the closest thing the province has to a structural answer to its logistics problem.
The corridors are the trade. Cathode moves by road to Durban, Beira, Dar es Salaam or Lobito, crossing borders where queues are measured in days. The Lobito Atlantic Railway is the change agent — a rail route west to the Atlantic that shortens the journey to European and American buyers materially.
Metals desk →| Operation | Product | Owner and note |
|---|---|---|
| Kamoa-Kakula | Sulphide, cathode and concentrate | Ivanhoe and Zijin with the state — among the highest-grade large copper mines in the world |
| Tenke Fungurume | Cathode and cobalt hydroxide | CMOC — one of the largest combined copper-cobalt operations |
| Kisanfu | Cathode and cobalt hydroxide | CMOC — the newer of its two major Congolese operations |
| Kamoto (KCC) | Cathode and cobalt hydroxide | Glencore with Gécamines |
| Mutanda | Cathode and cobalt hydroxide | Glencore — idled and restarted with the cobalt cycle |
| Kinsevere | Cathode | Zijin |
| Deziwa and Frontier | Cathode | Gécamines with CNMC, and ERG near the Zambian border |
Minerals desk
Cobalt hydroxide, priced as a percentage of somebody else's metal.
Cobalt leaves the DRC as hydroxide at 20 to 40% cobalt, not as metal. It is priced as a payability — an agreed percentage of the standard-grade cobalt metal assessment — and that payability swings violently with the market. In a tight market it approaches the metal price; in a glut it collapses, and the collapse is where the real loss sits.
Almost all of it is refined in China. A hydroxide seller is therefore exposed to a small set of buyers with an aligned view of the market, which is a structurally weak position and the reason producers have supported state intervention.
That intervention is now the defining feature of the trade. The government suspended cobalt exports outright and moved to a quota system to support prices. Availability from this origin is a policy variable, and a term contract written without addressing quota allocation is a contract with a hole in it.
Minerals desk →| Source | Form | Operator and note |
|---|---|---|
| Tenke Fungurume and Kisanfu | Hydroxide, 20 – 40% Co | CMOC — the largest single source of world cobalt supply |
| Kamoto (KCC) and Mutanda | Hydroxide | Glencore — the principal non-Chinese producer |
| Metalkol RTR | Hydroxide from tailings | ERG — reprocessing historic tailings rather than mining new ore |
| Artisanal production | Heterogenite ore | A material and variable share of supply, requiring chain of custody to be bought at all |
Metals desk
The 3T minerals, and the frameworks built around them.
Tin, tantalum and tungsten from the eastern provinces are the original conflict minerals. Dodd-Frank section 1502, the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation and the ITSCI traceability scheme all exist because of this specific supply chain, and they set the terms on which any of this material can be bought.
The known failure mode is not fraud at the mine, it is smuggling across borders and laundering through a neighbouring country's export statistics. Provenance evidence that stops at a national customs declaration is not provenance evidence, which is why tagging and chain of custody run to the pit.
Bisie in North Kivu is one of the highest-grade tin mines in the world and a genuinely important part of global supply. It also sits in a province where armed conflict has interrupted operations, and any position taken here carries that as an operating assumption rather than a tail risk.
Metals desk →| Source | Material | Location and note |
|---|---|---|
| Bisie | Tin concentrate | Alphamin, North Kivu — very high grade, subject to security interruption |
| Rubaya | Coltan — tantalum and niobium | North Kivu — a globally significant tantalum source with a contested control history |
| Kibali | Gold doré | Barrick and AngloGold with the state — the principal industrial gold operation |
| Twangiza and eastern artisanal gold | Doré and unrefined gold | A very large informal flow with weak provenance; bought only against full chain of custody |
Regulation
What governs whether we can buy it at all.
Two questions decide a Congolese trade: whether the volume is administratively available, and whether its chain of custody survives inspection. Price is the third question, not the first.
- 012018 Mining Code
- Royalties were raised across the board, the state holds a free-carried interest, and cobalt was designated a strategic substance carrying a materially higher royalty rate. A windfall provision applies when prices exceed the level assumed in the feasibility study.
- 02Cobalt export quotas
- Exports were suspended outright and replaced with an allocated quota system intended to support the price. Volume available from this origin is set administratively, so a term contract must address quota allocation explicitly or it is unenforceable in practice.
- 03Responsible sourcing
- OECD due diligence guidance, ITSCI and RMI traceability, and buyer audit programmes govern what can be bought. Material without a documented chain of custody to a named operation is not purchased at any discount, and that is a hard line rather than a preference.
- 04Conflict minerals frameworks
- Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold from the eastern provinces fall under US and EU conflict minerals rules. Downstream buyers carry reporting obligations that flow back up the chain to us, so provenance documentation is part of the cargo, not an attachment to it.
- 05Subcontracting and local content
- Regulation reserves subcontracting to Congolese-owned entities and imposes local content requirements on operators. It shapes the counterparty structure on the ground and is verified during onboarding rather than assumed.
- 06Corridor formalities
- Every tonne crosses at least one border. Customs, transit bonds and pre-shipment inspection at Kasumbalesa and the other crossings add days that are predictable and therefore plannable — and unplanned, they become demurrage.
Execution
Two thousand kilometres of road.
- Road haulage of 2,000 km and more to Durban, Beira, Dar es Salaam or Lobito, with the Lobito rail corridor materially shortening the Atlantic route
- Border queues at Kasumbalesa measured in days and built into laycan rather than discovered at the crossing
- Cathode in bundles and hydroxide in bulk bags — this is container and breakbulk trade, not dry bulk
- Sealed and weighed at the mine gate, reweighed at the port, with the tolerance and the arbiter agreed in advance
- Chain of custody documentation from named operation to port on every cobalt and 3T lot, checked before payment rather than after
- Security, transit insurance and loss-in-transit tolerance priced into the corridor rather than absorbed
Origination
Copperbelt producers and corridor operators can reach the metals and minerals desks through our Dubai trading office.