Soaring cobalt prices force Samsung SDI to mine metal from old phones

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cosmetal

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Sacramento, CA USA
From Mining.com:

http://www.mining.com/soaring-cobalt-prices-force-samsung-sdi-mine-metal-old-phones/?utm_source=digest-en-mining-180212&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digest

"Samsung SDI, South Korea’s leading battery maker, has unveiled plans to recycle cobalt from used mobile phones and develop lithium-ion batteries with minimum content of the metal, or no cobalt at all, as a way to offset soaring prices for the silver-grey commodity."

The article sounds like this is a new deal for Samsung. It also quotes Umicore:

"Recycling the 1.6 billion used mobile phones said to be wasting away in people’s drawers, could provide cobalt to meet demand from millions of electric vehicles, according to Belgium-based Umicore, one of the largest producers of cathodes for electric car batteries.

“There is an amazing mine of cobalt that is totally untapped,” the company’s chief executive Marc Grynberg told FT.com, adding that about 10% of global cobalt supply goes to smartphones production."


Excuse my ignorance, but, this article makes it sound like its a new deal for smartphone makers to be recycling their li-ion batteries. Is it? Have their recycling efforts simply been to pass the consumer baton to existing large scale multinationals such as Umicore? Am I missing some links and players in the recycling chain of li-ion batteries?

Peace,
James
 
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