Industry sources and a letter seen by Refinitiv show a customs platform outage in the DRC could cause producers to lose part of their 1H cobalt export quotas after a new regulatory directive requires reclaiming unused allocations. The technical failure may delay up to about 20,000 tonnes of cobalt — roughly $1.1 bln at current prices — from shipping on schedule. The DRC accounts for about 70% of global cobalt production.

2026-07-03

Industry sources and a letter seen by Refinitiv show a customs platform outage in the DRC could cause producers to lose part of their 1H cobalt export quotas after a new regulatory directive requires reclaiming unused allocations. The technical failure may delay up to about 20,000 tonnes of cobalt — roughly $1.1 bln at current prices — from shipping on schedule. The DRC accounts for about 70% of global cobalt production.