收購非洲最大銅礦 中國長遠佈局鈷供應

As China Molybdenum announced it was buying one of Africa’s largest copper mines earlier this month one thing was soon clear: the acquisition was about far more than the red metal.

隨着洛陽鉬業(China Molybdenum)本月早些時候宣佈正在收購非洲最大銅礦之一，有一點很快變得明朗：這項收購遠不止是奔着這種紅色金屬而來。

The $2.65bn deal, the biggest private investment in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s history, is instead designed to secure China’s supplies of cobalt, a once niche raw material that is crucial to developing batteries for electric cars.

相反，這筆26.5億美元、剛果民主共和國(DRC)歷史上最大規模的私人投資，旨在確保中國的鈷供應。鈷曾是一種利基原材料，如今對研發電動汽車電池至關重要。

The purchase of the Tenke mine, which contains one of the world’s largest known deposits of copper and cobalt, shows how Chinese companies are now moving to take a dominant position in battery materials as the country prepares to shift its economy from heavily polluting industries.

Tenke銅鈷礦是世界已知銅、鈷儲量最多的礦之一，收購該礦顯示出，在中國準備使本國經濟擺脫高污染產業之際，中國企業正在電池材料領域搶佔主導地位。

Companies that make batteries for carmakers, from Tesla Motors to General Motors, will be increasingly reliant on Chinese-controlled supply chains as they scale up production of the electric cars western policymakers hope will help cut emissions and reliance on imported oil.

隨着從特斯拉汽車(Tesla Motors)到通用汽車(General Motors)的汽車製造商不斷提高電動汽車產量，爲他們生產電池的企業將越來越依賴中國企業控制的供應鏈。西方政策制定者希望電動汽車能有助於減少碳排放以及對進口石油的依賴。

“The majority of the cobalt is heading straight to China,” said Edward Spencer, an analyst at metals consultancy CRU. “Their global hold is huge.”

“大多數鈷都直接運往中國，”金屬商品諮詢機構英國商品研究所(CRU)分析師愛德華•斯賓塞(Edward Spencer)說，“他們控制着巨大的全球份額。”

If the Tenke mine deal goes through, Chinese companies will be responsible for around 62 per cent of global refined cobalt production next year, according to CRU estimates. Demand for the material is expected to soar by more than two-thirds over the next decade.

根據CRU的估算，如果Tenke銅鈷礦收購完成，中國企業明年將佔到全球精煉鈷產量的62%左右。未來10年，全球鈷需求預計將猛增逾三分之二。

In many ways, China is following a familiar playbook. At the turn of the millennium, the country moved to secure supplies of traditional commodities like oil and industrial metals, sometimes through acquisitions, other times through investments and loans-for-oil deals with countries such as Angola and Venezuela that held big deposits of the raw materials.

在很多方面，中國都遵循着相似的套路。在世紀之交，中國開始着手獲取石油、工業金屬等傳統大宗商品的供應——有時通過收購，有時通過投資，或是與安哥拉、委內瑞拉等原材料儲量豐富的國家簽訂貸款換石油協議。

But China’s control of other commodities last decade raised strategic concerns in Washington and Tokyo, after so-called rare earth metals — which were then primarily mined in China — were subject to export restrictions.

但中國限制所謂的稀土金屬（當時主要在中國開採）出口後，過去10年中國對其他種類大宗商品的控制引起了華盛頓和東京方面的戰略擔憂。

Beijing is now pushing the development of its electric vehicle market as a strategic goal, aiming to make its carmakers more competitive abroad while reducing air pollution at home.

如今，北京方面正將推動本國電動汽車市場發展作爲戰略目標，希望提升本土汽車製造商在國際上的競爭力，同時減少國內空氣污染。

China Moly’s largest shareholders are Luoyang Mining Group, a state-owned company, and Cathay Fortune Corp, a Shanghai-based private equity company.

洛陽鉬業的大股東包括國企洛陽礦業集團(Luoyang Mining Group)和總部位於上海的私人股本公司鴻商產業控股集團(Cathay Fortune Corp)。

The DRC, one of the world’s poorest countries, accounts for over half of the world’s supply of cobalt, which is also used in smartphone batteries. The Tenke mine, which lies in the south-east of the DRC, some 175km north-west of the provincial capital of Lubumbashi, last year produced 16,000 tonnes of cobalt and it has reserves that could last 25 years, according to the company.

剛果民主共和國是世界最貧窮國家之一，供應全球一半以上的鈷。鈷也用於智能手機電池的生產。Tenke銅鈷礦位於剛果民主共和國東南部，在省會城市盧本巴希(Lubumbashi)西北約175公里。洛陽鉬業表示，去年Tenke鈷產量爲1.6萬噸，其鈷儲量還可繼續開採25年。

“Chinese strategists have long seen the DRC as one of the prime places for Chinese access to raw material, including cobalt,” says Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at Chatham House. “I’ve always suspected the natural resources-for infrastructure model that happened in Angola was actually a testing of a model they wanted to deploy in the DRC.”

“中國戰略家們長期以來一直將剛果民主共和國視爲中國獲得包括鈷在內的原材料的理想地之一，”英國皇家國際事務研究所(Chatham House)非洲項目負責人亞歷克斯•瓦因斯(Alex Vines)表示，“我一直懷疑在安哥拉推行的自然資源換基礎設施模式實際上是一次測試，中國人希望將這種模式應用在剛果民主共和國。”

Around 93 per cent of China’s cobalt units originate in the DRC, according to analysts at Macquarie, the highest proportion of commodity supply from a single country. That is unlike other battery commodities such as lithium, where China can supply 17 per cent of its own supply.

麥格理(Macquarie)的分析師表示，中國約93%的鈷原料來自剛果民主共和國，這是由單個國家供應大宗商品的最高比例。這還不同於鋰等其他電池原料商品，中國國內可以提供17%的鋰原料供應。

“There’s no other commodity where China is so reliant on a single country,” says Colin Hamilton, an analyst at Macquarie. “When you have that concentration risk they want some degree of security.”

“在其他大宗商品上，中國都沒有如此依賴單個國家，”麥格理分析師科林•漢密爾頓(Colin Hamilton)表示，“當面臨這種集中度風險時，他們需要某種程度的安全保障。”

The move into cobalt partly reflects the rise of Asian battery companies, which already account for the bulk of the world’s production of lithium-ion batteries, the main type of battery used in most modern electrical devices, from smartphones to electric vehicles. Over 90 per cent of new lithium-ion battery manufacturing projects in the pipeline are expected to be in China.

進軍鈷礦開採在一定程度上反映出亞洲電池企業的崛起，全球很大一部分鋰離子電池——從智能手機到電動汽車的多數現代電子設備普遍使用的電池類型——都由亞洲電池企業生產。在新規劃的鋰電池生產項目中，逾90%預計將落戶中國。

The main exception is Tesla Motor’s giant new gigafactory under construction in Nevada. The company is ramping up production of its new Model 3 mass market car, aiming for 500,000 vehicles by 2018, though analysts question where it will source the raw materials for its batteries.

一個主要的例外是特斯拉在內華達州的在建新鋰電池超級工廠。特斯拉正在提高新大衆車型Model 3的產量，目標是到2018年年產50萬輛，但分析師質疑它將從哪裏獲得製造電池所需要的原材料。

While battery makers are reducing the amount of cobalt they use in favour of other metals such as nickel or manganese, it is not expected to fall below 10 to 20 per cent in the most popular battery technologies for cars in the 2015-2020 timeframe, according to Adam Collins, an analyst at Liberum.

Liberum的分析師亞當•柯林斯(Adam Collins)表示，雖然電池製造商正在減少鈷的使用量，而更多地採用鎳、錳等其他金屬，但在2015至2020年期間，在最受歡迎的汽車電池技術中，鈷所佔比例預計不會下降至10%至20%以下。

Belgium-based Umicore, which supplies cathode materials to major battery makers, said last month it would triple production of nickel-manganese-cobalt materials at its plants in South Korea and China over the next three years. That was confirmation the NMC cathode is “the technology of choice for the vast majority of platforms”, the company’s CEO Marc Grynberg said.

爲大型電池製造商提供陰極材料、總部位於比利時的Umicore公司上月表示，將在未來3年將其韓國和中國工廠的鎳錳鈷合金材料產量提高2倍。該公司首席執行官馬克•格林貝格(Marc Grynberg)表示，這相當於確認鎳錳鈷陰極材料爲“絕大多數平臺的首選技術”。

“This is unlikely to change in the near future and the technology road map shows NMC as having great potential to enable batteries to reach the car manufacturers’ target in terms of both driving range and system costs,” he said.

他說：“這不大可能在不久的將來發生變化，技術發展藍圖顯示，鎳錳鈷材料有巨大的潛力，能夠讓電池在汽車行駛里程和系統成本兩項上都達到汽車製造商的目標。”

Still, there are some versions of the lithium-ion battery, such as the lithium iron phosphate technology, that does not use any cobalt. But while such batteries are safer, analysts say they lack the energy density of other lithium-ion technologies, limiting their uses.

不過，還有一些其他類型的鋰離子電池——如磷酸鋰鐵技術——不使用任何鈷原料。雖然此類電池更安全，但分析人士表示，由於達不到其他鋰離子技術的儲能密度，它們的應用受到了限制。

“Though we don’t believe the narrative that there is a cobalt crisis,” said Chris Berry, an analyst at House Mountain Partners in New York. “We do see higher looming cobalt prices as China plays the ‘long game’ to dominate the cobalt supply chain.”

“雖然我們不認爲鈷供應出現了危機，”紐約House Mountain Partners的分析師克里斯•貝里(Chris Berry)說，“但隨着中國長遠佈局以主導鈷的供應鏈，鈷價肯定會出現上漲。”