DRC extends cobalt export ban by three months as stockpiles stay high

The Democratic Republic of Congo's mining regulator ARECOMS extended its cobalt export suspension by a further three months on 21 June 2025, just as the original four-month freeze imposed in February was due to expire. The regulator cited "the continued high level of stock on the market" as its reason for keeping the ban in place rather than allowing exports to resume.

A policy that outgrew its own timetable

When ARECOMS first suspended exports in February, it built in a three-month review point with an outside deadline of four months — a signal, at the time, that the intervention was meant to be short and sharp. Instead, by June it was clear that the stockpiles of unsold cobalt sitting at mine sites and in Chinese ports had not shrunk enough to satisfy the regulator that reopening trade would support prices rather than simply flooding the market again.

The extension caught much of the market off guard for a second time. Producers who had spent the initial suspension continuing to mine and stockpile cobalt — betting on a resumption within months — now faced an open-ended wait, with no firm date for when exports might restart.

Why it matters

The extension underlined a pattern that would recur through 2025: Congo's regulator was prepared to keep moving the goalposts on cobalt exports rather than commit to a fixed timetable, prioritising its assessment of market conditions over the predictability that mining companies and their customers craved. For CMOC, Glencore and other producers, the open-ended nature of the ban made planning difficult — should they keep stockpiling cobalt in anticipation of a reopening, or start curbing production to avoid a still-larger overhang once exports resumed?

For Chinese refiners, who depend on Congolese cobalt hydroxide for the bulk of their feedstock, the extension meant drawing down existing inventories for longer than planned, adding urgency to efforts to find alternative sources or switch processing routes.

What happens next

The extension pushed the earliest possible resumption of trade into the final quarter of 2025. It also set the stage for a bigger shift in approach: rather than simply lifting or renewing a blanket ban again, Congo would spend the following months designing a permanent quota system intended to control export volumes indefinitely, rather than relying on open-ended suspensions that satisfied no one in the industry.

Sources

• IEA / Legal500: DRC extends cobalt export ban; DRC Implements Stringent Measures to Regulate Cobalt Industry, 21 Jun 2025

Photo: The Mutanda copper-cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.