A Retrospective on China’s 20-Year Nickel-Cobalt Battle: Glencore Represents Corporate Advancement; China Represents Supply Chain Evolution

Only a handful of people sensed the takeoff moment of China’s power battery industry. CMOC Group perceived the gathering storm early through its cobalt operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); Tsingshan Holding Group did so via its nickel ventures; and Guangdong Brunp Recycling Technology—the leader in battery recycling—did so by securing recycled nickel and cobalt materials. Battery materials are rapidly driving up demand for nickel and cobalt. As power batteries took off, Chinese mining enterprises began spreading their wings across Africa and Indonesia—ready to soar. Those failing to board this supply-chain ‘war chariot’ inevitably lost out in this race. Zijin Mining’s 2024 revenue reached RMB 300 billion—1.5 times that of CMOC Group. Copper, a critical material for AI servers, has surged in both usage and value over the past two years. Even so, Zijin’s strategic positioning differs markedly: it remains largely absent from the power battery metals arena. Its cobalt business is merely an ancillary to its copper operations, producing only about 864 tons of cobalt in 2024—less than 1% of CMOC’s 110,000 tons. Within the narrative of nickel-cobalt for power batteries, Zijin’s prominence naturally pales beside CMOC’s, which rose to global fame in Africa. CMOC needs just two mines in a single country to cement its status as the world’s dominant copper-cobalt producer. In fact, CMOC Group, Huayou Cobalt, and Shengtun Mining’s rise in cobalt mining has already made China a pivotal force in balancing global cobalt prices. In 2025, the DRC government once again imposed a cobalt export ban—pushing cobalt prices above RMB 300,000 per ton. Unsurprisingly, this ban will likely soften into a quota-based export regime. Although export volumes face constraints, the move benefits CMOC—which owns its own mines. Ultimately, global supply chain security hinges on control over mineral assets. Only with such control can enterprises build anti-fragile supply chains—and only then can a nation’s industrial system claim genuine security. The Supply Chain War Is Reshaping Global Nickel-Cobalt Trade When CMOC entered the DRC, the preceding decade had belonged to global commodity trading giants like Glencore. As the core supplier of DRC cobalt, Glencore established commanding influence over global cobalt trade. Although Glencore’s cobalt output continues growing, Chinese peers have surged forward with overwhelming momentum—creating a steep, rapid expansion in capacity. Chinese miners have emerged before the incumbent hegemon as unconventional, formidable challengers. This is a full-spectrum supply chain war—from mine to electric vehicle—spanning a long logistical chain. Ore extracted from distant African sites ultimately reaches end consumers through five sequential stages: mining → smelting → refining → materials processing → end-use application. Each stage relies on continuous iteration of equipment and process technologies. Take the ‘refining’ stage, for example: transforming various cobalt salts—such as cobalt chloride and cobalt sulfate—into battery-grade cobalt chemicals—including cobalt tetroxide and cobalt hydroxide—requires vast numbers of engineers across China. This involves countless highly specialized suppliers: reaction vessels, extractants, drying equipment, and more. Only China’s hyper-efficient, high-speed supply chain can meticulously calibrate every gear into a machine of astonishing efficiency. In fact, much like rare earths, China holds unparalleled advantages across the entire nickel-cobalt value chain. As gears turn and machines advance, the influence of international commodity traders is gradually waning.

Private Intelligence Firm GMA Orchestrates African Mining Rights Projects and Their Impact on China-Related Initiatives

Under pre-emptive lobbying by external think tanks such as GMA, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) formally proposed to the United States in the first half of 2025 a deal offering exclusive strategic mineral access in exchange for defense support. In February 2026, the U.S.-DRC Joint Steering Committee for the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) convened its inaugural meeting in Kinshasa—officially launching the agreement’s operational implementation phase. The DRC government submitted to the U.S. its first list of ‘Strategic Asset Reserves’ (SAR), legally granting American enterprises absolute preferential access rights. Remarkably, the DRC unilaterally designated the Rubaya mega-high-grade coltan-tantalum deposit—still under rebel control—as a priority investment zone for U.S. capital. In return, the U.S. imposed targeted sanctions in March 2026 against senior military officials of neighboring countries supporting the M23 rebel group—completing a closed-loop transaction: low-cost diplomatic leverage exchanged for hard-asset control. 2. Administrative Expulsions and Physical Supply Disruptions in the Katanga Heartland As the U.S.-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement advanced, Chinese mining enterprises operating in Katanga Province faced successive administrative and physical blockades: Administrative Veto of Major Equity Transactions: In March 2025, during the sale of Chemaf Mining—a subsidiary of Trafigura—Chinese bidders offered highly competitive acquisition terms, yet the DRC government directly vetoed the deal on administrative grounds. The asset was subsequently steered toward a U.S.-backed consortium. Stringent Quota-Based Interruption of Physical Supply Chains: In 2025, the DRC first abruptly suspended physical exports, then empowered its strategic minerals regulator ARECOMS to enforce an extremely strict cobalt export quota system—capping nationwide exports at 96,600 tons annually for both 2026 and 2027. This measure not only choked off physical shipments for Chinese firms operating in Africa but also triggered systemic price surges and acute upstream raw material shortages in China’s new-energy battery supply chain and defense-specialty alloy sectors by the second half of 2026. Secondary Western Capital ‘Bottom-Fishing’: Amid liquidity and financial suffocation caused by export quotas, Glencore launched asset divestiture negotiations in February 2026—intending to sell approximately 40% of its core DRC assets, valued at around USD 9 billion, to the ‘Orion Critical Mineral Consortium,’ a U.S.-government- and strategic-fund-backed entity. This case constitutes a textbook-level empirical demonstration of how think-tank geopolitical intervention directly transforms into instruments of state coercion. Leveraging Kinshasa’s security anxieties, Western actors achieved—with no ground troops deployed—a dual blow against Chinese mining interests: first blocking bottom-up mergers and acquisitions, then cutting off physical exports—through nothing more than diplomatic sanctions and binding agreements. It is a precise predatory loop: first imposing ‘physical supply disruption’ to depress asset valuations, then enabling U.S.-backed consortia to conduct so-called ‘compliant acquisitions’. GMA’s End-to-End Anti-China Logic Mapping GMA’s operations across Africa reveals a coherent, systematic blueprint for geopolitical warfare targeting Chinese overseas investments. Its integrated approach delivers coordinated, structural blows against Chinese commercial interests abroad.

Congo Miners Could Save $1 Billion Annually with New Power Project, Trafigura Executive Says

Oct 7, 2026

Trafigura executives state a new $300 million power transmission project between Zambia and Congo could save miners $1 billion annually by replacing diesel with imported electricity, addressing chronic power shortages constraining copper and cobalt production.

reuters

2026-06-18

Trafigura Targets Gupta Dubai Assets In Bid to Recoup Lost Nickel Millions

2026-10-07

Congo Miners Could Save $1 Billion Annually with New Power Project, Trafigura Executive Says

2026-10-29

Trafigura signs $1.5 billion loan to back five-year gas supply contract with SEFE

Congo Miners Could Save $1 Billion Annually with New Power Project, Trafigura Executive Says

FAQ