The only US cobalt mine sits fallow in the northern Idaho woods, a mothballed hunk of steel and dirt that is too expensive for its owner to operate because Chinese rivals have flooded global markets with cheap supplies of the bluish metal used in electric vehicle EV batteries and electronics.
Jervois Global, which dug the mine into the side of a nearly 8,000-foot 2,400-metre mountain, watched helplessly last year as cobalt prices plunged after China's CMOC Group opened the Kisanfu mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, pushing global production of the metal to an all-time high.
The Idaho site, which Jervois bought in 2019, was idled in June 2023 just weeks before it was set to open. More than 250 workers lost their jobs. A skeleton crew now rotates unused rock crushing equipment weekly to keep it from flattening under its own weight.
'We were straightforward with our staff and told them 'This is all about the price of cobalt,'' site manager Matthew Lengerich told Reuters during a visit to the facility. Jervois says cobalt prices need to reach at least 20 per pound for the site to open. But prices sat near 12.17 in July.
A similar quandary faces BHP, Albemarle and other Western mining companies trying to compete with metals produced by Chinese-linked companies, some of which use coal-generated electricity, child labor or other practices not meeting the standards set by many governments and manufacturers.
