How cobalt ore is mined

Most cobalt is never mined for itself. It comes up as a side product of copper and nickel.

stations: 3
things downstream: 22

The short version

Cobalt mostly arrives as a passenger in copper and nickel ore, and arsenide ores, mined chiefly in Morocco, are the only primary cobalt ores. At Tenke Fungurume in the Congo, an open pit feeds plants that leach out copper and cobalt. Sulfide ore is made into a copper-cobalt concentrate, and a further flotation pulls out a cobalt-rich product.

Dig the copper pit

Nearly all cobalt sits in ores of copper, nickel or both. At Tenke Fungurume in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, conventional open-pit mining digs copper-cobalt ore, and the plant turned out 182,597 t of copper cathode against 15,436 t of cobalt hydroxide in 2020.
Leach out the metals

At Tenke Fungurume, copper is dissolved by atmospheric leaching and recovered by solvent extraction and electrowinning. Cobalt goes through a separate sulfur dioxide leach, then purification and precipitation, and leaves as cobalt hydroxide.
Float the sulfide ore

Sulfide ores from Congo and Zambia are first concentrated in the usual way into a copper-cobalt product. A second flotation uses reagents that pull cobalt minerals to the bubbles ahead of copper, giving a concentrate of as much as 15% cobalt.

End of the lineCobalt ore Next it goes into cobalt.

Worth repeating

The Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for more than 80% of cobalt production in 2024, when output exceeded 300,000 tons.
Cobalt blue pigments have been used since antiquity to tint glass.
Early smelters who tried to get copper or silver from cobalt ores got only powder and toxic arsenic fumes, and the name is usually traced to the German kobold, a goblin blamed for the trouble.