[SMM Weekly Review] The cobalt intermediate products market continued its strong trend this week, maintaining a "price without market" pattern.

This week, the cobalt intermediate products market continued its strong trend, maintaining a pattern of "price without market." Supply side, mainstream spot cargo offers remained anchored around $25.0/lb, with some Q2 2026 futures offers around $27/lb. Demand side, against the backdrop of losses, smelters continued to restock based on rigid demand. According to the latest enterprise export progress, pilot enterprises may achieve exports by December month-end or early January, while the export process for other enterprises remained relatively slow, with a relatively small possibility of exports within 2025. Considering the approximately three-month transportation cycle, cobalt intermediate products from the DRC are expected to arrive at ports successively in March and April next year. The logic of structurally tight raw material supply remained unchanged, providing continued support for intermediate product prices to rise.

SMM New Energy Research Team

Cong Wang 021-51666838

Rui Ma 021-51595780

Disheng Feng 021-51666714

Yanlin Lü 021-20707875

Wenhao Xiao 021-51666872

Haohan Zhang 021-51666752

Zihan Wang 021-51666914

Jie Wang 021-51595902

Yang Xu 021-51666760

Lianting Yang 021-51595835

Zhaoyu Wang 021-51666827