Power up! Apple amps up the cobalt chase

For lithium-ion battery industry, electric vehicle boom sparks fears of global cobalt shortage

Apple continues to ring up iPhone sales by the millions.

And the tech giant is now apparently looking for a direct line on one of its product components—to wit, cobalt.

The metal is a key ingredient in the production of lithium ion batteries for smartphones. In fact, about a quarter of all the cobalt produced on earth is used to help power our handheld tech toys.

But it’s also essential to the manufacture of electric vehicle (EV) batteries. What’s more:

• The price of cobalt has more than tripled, to US$80,000 a metric ton, in the past 18 months;
• Demand for cobalt in electric vehicles and other lithium-ion batteries is set to spike in the next decade, from 55 tons in 2017 to 324 tons in 2030;
• The battery for an electric car needs more than 1,000 times the refined cobalt required for a smartphone battery; and
• Car manufacturers like BMW and Volkswagen are already clamoring to sign long-term cobalt supply contracts.

Apple is reportedly going straight to the source, and negotiating directly with mining companies to ensure it has enough cobalt to produce a steady stream of iPhones and iPads. Sources have told Bloomberg that Apple is looking for several thousand metric tons of cobalt a year.

Ethical concerns

Amid fears of a cobalt shortage are concerns about who, exactly, doing the cobalt mining.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the majority of the world’s cobalt is produced, Amnesty International sounded the alarm in 2016—claiming that as much as 20 percent of Congo’s production came via child labor, and that it was being purchased by Apple and Samsung’s Chinese suppliers.

Apple has since published a supplier responsibility guide and promised to source its cobalt in an ethical way.

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