Top 13 Countries by Cobalt Mine Production, 2025

by admin December 20, 2025 2623 23 min read

Global mined cobalt supply in 2024 (estimated): who produces it, and why the ranking matters

Unit: metric tons (cobalt content) • Year: 2024e

“Mine production” measures the cobalt content recovered from mining (often as a by-product of copper or nickel operations), not the amount of refined cobalt chemicals or metal used by battery and industrial supply chains. This distinction matters: mined output is geographically concentrated, while refining and intermediate processing can be concentrated in different places, creating a two-step supply risk (extraction risk and processing risk).

The 2024 ranking below uses the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries snapshot (published January 2025). The USGS table reports the major producing countries individually and aggregates smaller producers into an “Other countries” bucket. Because of that reporting structure, the maximum country detail available from this primary source is a limited set of named producers, rather than a fully granular Top 50 or Top 100 list.

Table 1 — Top 10 countries by cobalt mine production (2024e)

Rank	Country	Mine production (t)
1	Congo (Kinshasa)	220,000
2	Indonesia	28,000
3	Russia	8,700
4	Canada	4,500
5	Philippines	3,800
6	Australia	3,600
7	Cuba	3,500
8	Papua New Guinea	2,800
9	Turkey	2,700
10	Madagascar	2,600

Chart A — Top 10 mined cobalt producers (2024e)

The chart visualizes the Top 10 from Table 1. Values are USGS estimates for 2024 and may be revised in future releases.

Ranking insights: why cobalt mine output is unusually concentrated

The cobalt supply chain is shaped by a structural feature: much of mined cobalt is produced as a by-product, not from primary cobalt mines. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, cobalt is largely associated with copper deposits; in several other producing regions, it is commonly tied to nickel laterites or nickel sulfides. This by-product nature makes “quick diversification” difficult: expanding cobalt supply often requires expanding copper or nickel mining and processing capacity, which is capital-intensive and constrained by environmental, social, and infrastructure factors.

In 2024 (USGS estimate), the #1 producer (Congo (Kinshasa)) dominates mined cobalt output at a scale that materially affects pricing, contracting, and downstream risk management. In practice, many “global supply” discussions are less about whether cobalt exists geologically, and more about how quickly mine-linked processing routes can be expanded without creating new bottlenecks.

A second pattern is the presence of a steep drop after the top two producers. Indonesia, the clear #2 in 2024, is still far smaller than the #1 producer, while the rest of the named producers are an order of magnitude smaller than Indonesia. This creates a “barbell” structure: one dominant source, one large secondary source, and a long tail of smaller outputs.

Table 2 — Full list of reported producers in the USGS world table (2024e)

This is the maximum country granularity available in the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 “World mine production” table for cobalt. “Other countries” aggregates smaller producers that are not itemized individually in the table.

Rank	Country / group	Mine production (t)
1	Congo (Kinshasa)	220,000
2	Indonesia	28,000
3	Russia	8,700
4	Other countries (aggregate)	6,200
5	Canada	4,500
6	Philippines	3,800
7	Australia	3,600
8	Cuba	3,500
9	Papua New Guinea	2,800
10	Turkey	2,700
11	Madagascar	2,600
12	New Caledonia	1,500
13	United States	300

Chart B — Pareto curve: production levels vs. cumulative share of global output (2024e)

Bars show mine production by producer (sorted). The line shows the cumulative share of the world total (USGS world total, rounded). The curve illustrates how quickly cumulative share approaches 100% because output is heavily concentrated.

What the ranking implies for policy, industry, and macroeconomic exposure

A ranking that is dominated by a single producer is not just a “mining” story; it is an exposure map for everything downstream. When one country accounts for the majority of mined cobalt, supply shocks (regulatory changes, logistics disruption, operational issues, or financing constraints) can propagate quickly through intermediate products and into battery and alloy markets. This effect is amplified when mine supply is linked to a small number of processing routes, because inventory and hedging decisions tend to cluster around the same nodes in the supply chain.

The economic interpretation is also asymmetric: for the dominant producer, cobalt-linked value can become macro-relevant for trade flows and fiscal receipts; for import-dependent economies, cobalt becomes a strategic input where “security of supply” is defined by reliability and substitutability rather than by price alone. In addition, because cobalt is frequently a by-product, cycles in copper and nickel markets can translate into cobalt availability even when cobalt demand follows a different trajectory.

Policy takeaway (key implications)

Concentration is the central fact. With most output coming from one producer, risk management tends to focus on continuity of operations and exportability, not only on marginal cost curves.
Diversification is structurally slow. Because cobalt is often a by-product, expanding mined supply can require investment decisions driven by copper or nickel economics.
Strategic resilience is multi-layered. “Mining concentration” and “processing concentration” can be different, so resilience strategies must consider both layers.
Measurement matters. World totals are rounded in the USGS table and 2024 values are estimates; year-to-year comparisons should account for revisions.

Table 3 — Concentration metrics (based on 2024e world total)

Concentration is computed from the same USGS world table used in Parts 1–2, including the “Other countries” aggregate. HHI is reported on the common 0–10,000 scale (sum of squared market shares).

Metric	Value	Interpretation
Share of #1 producer (Congo (Kinshasa))	≈ 75.9%	Single-country dominance at a level that typically defines global price and contract risk.
Top 3 share (Congo + Indonesia + Russia)	≈ 88.5%	Most global mine supply is concentrated in three producers.
Top 5 share (Top 3 + Other countries + Canada)	≈ 92.2%	Even after adding two more entries, the global distribution remains steep.
Top 10 share (largest 10 entries in Table 2)	≈ 97.9%	A small set of producers accounts for nearly all recorded global output in the table.
Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI)	≈ 5,872	Very high concentration (HHI rises sharply when one producer dominates).

Primary data sources and technical notes

USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 — Cobalt (2-page commodity chapter).
World mine production (2023) and 2024 estimates, plus world total and notes on revisions.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-cobalt.pdf
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 — Cobalt data release (extracted table data and metadata).
Machine-readable release aligned to the cobalt chapter in MCS 2025.
https://data.usgs.gov/datacatalog/data/USGS%3A6797fb00d34ea8c18376e159
USGS National Minerals Information Center — Cobalt statistics and information.
Portal for cobalt-related publications, background notes, and time-series references.
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/cobalt-statistics-and-information
Our World in Data — “Cobalt production” (Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy dataset, processed by OWID).
Long-run time series context (1995–2024) in thousand tonnes; useful for cross-checking the direction of global trends.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cobalt-production

Technical note: 2024 figures are estimates (USGS notation “e”), and the world total is reported as rounded. Concentration metrics and shares are computed from the same table for internal consistency.