The cobalt industry museum built by GEM. [Photo/Taizhou Daily]
Located in the Taixing Economic Development Zone, GEM (Jiangsu) Cobalt has built a thriving business centered on green smelting, high-end material manufacturing and resource recycling.
It now produces more than 10,000 metric tons per year of cobalt tetroxide, its flagship product, which is widely used in cathode materials for mobile phone lithium batteries. With a global market share of about 20 percent, GEM's cobalt materials are found in roughly one out of every five smartphones worldwide.
Ye Hanchen, head of the company's New Product Research Institute, noted that global cobalt reserves are limited. Compared with traditional mining, recovering cobalt from discarded electronics and other forms of waste has become the most promising means of securing future supply, offering both environmental and economic advantages.
Established in 2020, the New Product Research Institute has drawn on more than 300 patented technologies to push GEM's products up the value chain. On one front, the company continues to refine cobalt tetroxide to meet the growing demand for faster charging and longer battery life in smartphones. At the same time, it has seized opportunities brought by the rise of new energy vehicles, developing two new cobalt-based additives that significantly improve the capacity and cycle stability of power batteries.
Efficiency gains have gone hand in hand with innovation. By advancing smart manufacturing, GEM has built intelligent production lines that enable automated management, from raw material procurement to product delivery. Such automation also ensures the consistency and stability of product quality, reinforcing the company's position at the forefront of the global cobalt materials industry.