Cobalt Blue Holdings has signed a non-binding term sheet with Swiss metals trader STG Metals GmbH for the sale of standard grade cobalt metal rounds from its planned Kwinana Cobalt Refinery in Western Australia. The refinery, developed jointly with Iwatani Australia, would produce cobalt metal rounds above 99.8 percent purity and cobalt sulphate heptahydrate, at a capacity reported at roughly 3,000 tonnes of cobalt a year, from a brownfields site at East Rockingham near the Port of Fremantle. It would be Australia’s first dedicated midstream cobalt sulphate refinery.
The commercial structure is assembling in sequence. Feedstock is partly secured under a binding agreement with Glencore reached in mid 2025, the site has Western Australian environmental approval to build and operate, and Cobalt Blue’s Broken Hill Technology Centre has produced cobalt metal and sulphate at pilot scale against market specifications, including trials on battery black mass as a domestic feed source.
“Offtake is a key pillar of our FID process, and this term sheet is a meaningful addition to our commercial framework,” chief executive Andrew Tong said. “Combined with the Glencore binding feedstock agreement and product qualification work at the Broken Hill Technology Centre, we are continuing to build the commercial foundations required to support the FID.”
The qualifier is the one in the announcement: the term sheet is non-binding, and it covers cobalt metal rounds rather than the refinery’s whole output. A final investment decision, targeted for early 2027 in company presentations, still needs the term sheet converted, financing closed and the sulphate side of the product mix placed.