The potential for cobalt in the UK

Cobalt is a lustrous, silvery-grey metal with many physical and chemical properties that make it useful in a wide variety of chemical and metallurgical applications. In the UK, cobalt is used in high-performance alloys for the aerospace sector and in the cemented carbide, magnet and special steel industries. Cobalt chemicals are used in the manufacture of batteries, glass and ceramics (Petavratzi et al., 2019). An area of significant demand growth for cobalt, and as such a driving force in the search for new cobalt deposits worldwide, is its use as a cathode material in electric vehicle batteries.