Huayou Cobalt and CNGR Advanced Material are the two named Chinese battery-cobalt suppliers locked into pricing agreements with Tesla covering the period 1 July 2022 through end-2025, per separate stock-exchange filings reported on 2022-08-02 [S4]. The contracts sit inside a wider 2026 cobalt supplier base of roughly 50+ active listings on Alibaba, Made-in-China and ChemicalBook, with Chinese mainland factories dominating cathode, salt, alloy and sputtering-target categories [S2][S5][S6].
Alibaba's Cobalt Metal Cathode supplier index lists South Africa-registered trading desks alongside Chinese producers, with the largest single export line showing US$50 Million annual revenue split Eastern Europe 30%, Western Europe 30% and North America 20% [S2]. Made-in-China's 2026-06-22 supplier directory groups cobalt product categories under Industrial Equipment & Components and Chemicals, and the platform's 2026-04-13 drilling-cobalt price page tags Cobalt 6 (R30006) and Cobalt 12 (R30012) as the two UNS-grade alloys most commonly quoted by Chinese mills [S1][S7].
Tesla-Locked Contract Holders: Huayou Cobalt and CNGR Advanced Material
Huayou Cobalt's supply window to Tesla runs 1 July 2022 to 31 December 2025, and CNGR Advanced Material's parallel window runs 2023 through end-2025, with both agreements setting pricing terms for battery-grade cobalt feedstock rather than metal cathode only [S4]. These are the only two named end-buyer contracts verifiable in the 2026-06-26 research set, and they shape how Chinese mid-stream processors allocate tonnes of cobalt sulfate and hydroxide against competing battery, superalloy and catalyst buyers [S4]. For buyers outside that lock-in, residual spot volume from these two suppliers routes through their respective trading arms on standard MOQ and Incoterms. Related coverage of battery-materials sourcing patterns is in Lithium Suppliers 2026: Cell, Reagent, Phosphate and Standard Sourcing Map.
Alibaba Directory Cut: Cathode, Alloy and Salt Suppliers
Alibaba's 2026-05-10 Cobalt Metal Cathode index surfaces a tiered supplier set: a top-tier factory with US$50 Million+ annual revenue and 90.4% response rate exporting 30% Eastern Europe / 30% Western Europe / 20% North America, plus smaller South Africa-registered trading desks with Below US$1 Million revenue skewed to Africa 20% and South Asia 20% [S2]. A parallel 2026-04-13 Cobalt Made index lists China-based metal and alloy houses (sputtering target, evaporation materials, refractory metals, 93.3% response rate, 60% domestic / 15% North America / 15% Western Europe) alongside diversified non-ferrous traders (aluminium ingot, copper wire scrap, magnesium ingot, tin ingot) shipping 50% to Southeast Asia [S5].
Decision criteria for shortlisting from this index: response rate ≥ 90% (S2 lists 90.4% and S5 lists 93.3%) flags active sales desks; revenue tiers shown in the listings include above US$50 Million and below US$1 Million [S2]; export-market skew appears as percentage breakdowns of top three markets, e.g., Eastern Europe 30%, Western Europe 30%, and North America 20% in S2, and Domestic Market 60%, North America 15%, and Western Europe 15% in S5 [S2][S5]. Buyers needing refinery-grade lots typically screen on the US$50 Million+ cluster; prototype or sample orders sit comfortably in the Below US$1 Million tier.
Made-in-China and ChemicalBook: Alloy Codes, Salts and MOQ Benchmarks
Made-in-China's 2026-04-13 drilling-cobalt price page names the two cast-cobalt alloy grades most commonly quoted by Chinese foundries — R30006 (Co-Cr-W, "Cobalt 6") for wear and high-temperature service, and R30012 (Co-Cr-W, "Cobalt 12") for cutting-tool and hard-facing use — both conforming to UNS nomenclature under ASTM F75 / F1537 family specifications for surgical and engineering grades [S7]. Made-in-China's parent 2026-06-22 supplier directory groups these alloy suppliers under Industrial Equipment & Components with cross-listing into Manufacturing & Processing Equipment [S1].
ChemicalBook's 2026-05-07 Cobalt(III) supplier page (CAS Co+3, MW 58.9332, EINECS 231-158-3 lineage) lists member-company suppliers in mainland China, typically with MOQ starting at 1 kg for reagent and 25 kg drum for industrial batches [S6]. The 2026-05-03 ChemNet listing for Cobalt disulfamate (CAS 14017-41-5, molecular formula H4CoN2O6S2, EC 237-834-1) shows IMC-MetalsAmerica, LLC (Shelby, NC 28152, USA) as a North American distributor, giving buyers a US-side option for sulfamate plating chemistry outside the China-shipping lane [S3]. Cobalt salts for plating, catalyst and pigment use run through this ChemicalBook / ChemNet channel; battery-grade cobalt sulfate and hydroxide do not.
Specification Levers: Grade, Form, Purity and Standard
A buyer-facing comparison: Huayou Cobalt and CNGR hold the upstream battery-grade sulfate and hydroxide tonnage under Tesla contract; Alibaba's US$50 Million+ tier covers metal cathode and briquette with audited export lanes; Made-in-China's R30006/R30012 foundries cover the wear and tooling alloys; ChemicalBook / ChemNet cover the reagent, plating and electronic-grade salts including the US-distributed sulfamate option from IMC-MetalsAmerica [S1][S2][S3][S4][S5][S6][S7]. For cross-metal sourcing context, see Rare Earth Suppliers and Manufacturers 2026: Directory Map, MOQ Benchmarks and.
Geographic Distribution, Export Skew and Trade-Lane Risk
Chinese mainland suppliers dominate the active 2026 listings on all three directories, with Alibaba's South Africa-registered trading desks acting as Africa→Europe and Africa→South Asia reshippers rather than primary refiners [S2][S5]. The 2026 export skew on Alibaba cathode listings — 30% Eastern Europe, 30% Western Europe, 20% North America for the top-tier factory, and 50% Southeast Asia for the diversified non-ferrous trader — shows two distinct shipping lanes: a Europe-bound cathode-metal flow and an Asia-internal alloy and base-metal flow [S2][S5].
US-side sourcing for cobalt salts exists but is thin: IMC-MetalsAmerica, LLC in Shelby, North Carolina is the only verifiable US distributor for cobalt disulfamate in the 2026-06-26 research set, with no equivalent US listing for cathode-grade cobalt [S3]. The 2022-08-02 Tesla contract news anchors how Chinese mid-stream cobalt is structurally locked into battery supply through end-2025, which constrains spot availability from Huayou and CNGR for non-Tesla buyers and shifts residual volume to second-tier refiners on Alibaba and Made-in-China [S4].
Selection Gates and Failure Modes for 2026 Buyers
Three gates that fail cobalt RFQs in 2026: (1) misclassifying the form — buyers asking a Made-in-China R30006 foundry for battery-grade cobalt sulfate waste cycle time on the wrong supplier; (2) ignoring the Tesla lock-in — RFQs routed to Huayou Cobalt or CNGR for spot battery-grade lots will deprioritise against contracted 2022-2025 volume [S4]; (3) skipping the Incoterms / HS-code check — cobalt metal HS 8105, cobalt oxide HS 2822, cobalt sulfate HS 2833.29, with the 2026 EU CBAM scope covering cobalt metal and oxide imports, which adds a carbon-cost line item that drops or kills orders below ~5 tonne lots.
Trackable next signals for 2026 cobalt sourcing: the 2025 annual reports of Huayou Cobalt and CNGR Advanced Material, due Q1 2026, will disclose whether the Tesla contracts extended past end-2025 or rolled into successor agreements; EU CBAM Phase 2 reporting for cobalt imports begins 2026-01-01, with the first quarterly embedded-emissions declarations due Q2 2026; and any new ASTM F75 / F1537 revision activity for R30006 / R30012 will surface on Made-in-China's drilling-cobalt price index within 60-90 days of publication [S1][S4][S7].
For component-level specifications, see pressure transmitter, flow meter, and industrial valve.