Cobalt by Country: One Producer, a Different Refiner

Cobalt’s country-level picture is dominated by one producer to a degree few other critical raw materials show, and the more informative story is what happens to that production once it leaves the ground.

Mine production

The Democratic Republic of Congo accounts for roughly 76 percent of global mined cobalt production, a direct consequence of the Central African Copperbelt geology covered on this material’s geology page. Indonesia follows at under 10 percent, its cobalt arriving as a co-product of the nickel laterite operations covered on nickel’s mining page, not from dedicated cobalt mines. Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Australia, and Cuba each contribute smaller, single-digit shares, each tied to that country’s own copper or nickel industry rather than cobalt-specific development.

Where the reserves sit, and why that matters for the future

Reserve estimates (the resource considered economically extractable at current prices and technology) are even more concentrated toward the DRC than current production, meaning the DRC’s dominance is not a temporary phase to be mined out over the coming decades, it reflects where the resource genuinely sits. Indonesia’s cobalt reserves, by contrast, are tied to the scale of its nickel laterite resource, and are likely to grow in relative importance as Indonesian nickel processing capacity continues expanding.

Refining tells a different story

Almost none of DRC-mined cobalt is refined into battery-grade chemicals inside the DRC itself, that step happens overwhelmingly in China, covered in more depth on this material’s supply chain page. This means the two most consequential country-level facts about cobalt, who mines it and who refines it, point to different countries entirely, a structural split worth stating plainly rather than assuming production geography tells the whole story.

Sources: production shares reference this project’s own verified production data (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025).