Recently, there have been market rumours that China plans to stockpile 2,000 mt of cobalt later this year as national reserves. Industry players said that the State Reserves Bureau (SRB) stockpiled around 3,000 mt of cobalt between 2014-2016 and there was no stockpiling over the past 4 years. The previous rumour was that SRB was to purchase 5,000 mt of cobalt. SMM learned from several major domestic refined cobalt suppliers that they have yet to receive official notices about government stockpiling.