Steele Li

CMOC Group is at the sharp end of China’s growing dominance in the battery metals supply chain. It is the largest shareholder in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) copper mine Tenke Fungurume, and in 2023 overtook Glencore as the world’s largest cobalt supplier thanks to a significant output boost from its massive Kisanfu mine, also in the DRC. 

It’s only likely to strengthen this position. “We are not talking, we are doing,” said chief investment officer and co-chair Steele Li at the Financial Times Mining Summit last year as he outlined China’s approach to minerals. China sees the energy transition as a new growth driver, replacing real estate as the nation’s next big economic theme. “We are thinking differently [to] other Chinese mining companies, because we think the trading function is strategically important at the group level,” he said. 

After buying IXM, a commodities trader, five years ago, it recently diversified into lithium and is setting up in South Korea, India and the DRC. Not all of this is going down well. The US government last year accused CMOC of predatory tactics to flood the market with cobalt to keep prices down and hurt competitors. Li gave a sense of the growing animosity telling the FT that cooperation with the West was “a no-go”. “Just check the acts of government over the past two years,” he said pointing to mineral export bans by Canada and the US.