Cobalt is a steel-gray hard metal with a metallic luster. Its main physical and chemical parameters are similar to those of iron and nickel. Cobalt is an iron-group element. It is an important raw material for the manufacture of heat-resisting alloys, hard alloys, anticorrosive alloys, magnetic alloys and various cobalt salts, and is widely applied to aviation, aerospace, electrical appliance, machine-building, chemical and ceramic industries. Therefore, it is an important strategic material.   

Cobalt minerals have long been utilized. Egyptians used cobalt blue as a blue coloring agent for ceramics before the Christian Era. Cobalt compounds have also been used as coloring agents in ceramic production in China since the Tang Dynasty. In 1735, Swedish chemist Brandt first separated cobalt, and in 1780, Bergman confirmed cobalt as a chemical element.   

Germany and Norway are the first producers of small amount of cobalt. In 1874, cobalt oxide ores in New Caledonia were developed. In 1903, Ag-Co and As-Co mines in northern Ontario, Canada, were put into production and made the global production of cobalt increase dramatically from 16 tons in 1904 to 1553 tons in 1909. Since the development of the Katanga Cu-Co ore belt of the Congo (K.) in 1920, its cobalt production has occupied the first place in the world. In Morocco, cobalt is produced from modderite. Pyrometallurgy used to be the predominant method of cobalt production. At present, various ways of hydrometallurgy have become deminant for cobalt extraction.   

In China, cobalt resources amount to 1.4 million tons, and most of them are by-product resources. Cobalt deposits that are mined exclusively for cobalt are very rare. Compared with the rest of the world, China's cobalt industry started later. In 1952, cobaltiferous iron was produced from earthy cobalt by Nanchang Metallurgy and Mining Company, Jiangxi Province, using simple blast furnaces. In 1956, Jiangxi Smeltery was built based on this technology, and the produced cobaltiferous iron was delivered to Sanying Electric Smeltery in Shanghai (the predecessor of Shanghai Smeltery) for further treatment. Cobaltiferous iron was also produced from earthy cobalt in Meixian, Guangdong Province, based on the same technology, and the product was delivered to Chaozhou Smeltery for further treatment to obtain industrial cobalt oxide.   

In 1954, Shenyang Smeltery used cobalt-bearing slag of zinc hydrometallurgy as raw material to obtain the first batch of electrolytic cobalt, thus preluding the production of electrolytic cobalt in China. In 1958, Ganzhou Cobalt Smeltery produced cobalt oxide from local earthy cobalt. As the local earthy cobalt resources were scattered and large-scale exploitation was impossible, Ganzhou Cobalt Smeltery began to process modderite ore imported from Morocco in 1960 according to the arrangement made by the former Ministry of Metallurgical Industry. This is the beginning of cobalt production using imported raw material in China. In 1966, Huludao Zine Smeltery first built a workshop for extracting cobalt from Co-bearing pyrite concentrates. Subsequently, the cobalt workshop of Nanjing Steelworks, Zibo Cobalt Smeltery and cobalt workshop of the Guanghua Phosphate Fertilizer Plant were built successively.   

After the development of Cu-Ni ores in Jinchuan of Gansu Province, Huili of Sichuan Province and Panshi of Jilin Province, Cu-Ni sulfides became important resources for recovery of cobalt. At present, cobalt production of Jinchuan Nonferrous Metal Company accounts for over 70% of the national total output, and it has turned into the primary base of cobalt production in China.