How One Trader’s Cobalt Hoard Is Making Its Way to America’s Strategic Vault

Mining major Glencore has agreed to buy the last of metal trader Rami Weisfisch’s stockpile of cobalt — nearly 2,000 metric tons worth $115 million. In a fine example of how middlemen work, the traded cobalt was originally acquired back in 2015 and has been stored in Europe and the U.S.

Glencore is buying the last of Weisfisch’s cobalt, stored in the U.S., and most likely selling it back to the federal government so it can add it to the Project Vault program, aimed at reducing dependency on Chinese supplies.

Cobalt prices have jumped sharply, partly due to the export ban by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Glencore cutting smart deals on the side. The Anglo-Swiss mining giant just acquired 2000 metric tons of cobalt to resell it to the U.S. government in an effort to beef up Project Vault. Most likely.

Too many things had to happen for this deal to make sense. So, for context: In early 2025 the DRC banned cobalt exports temporarily to arrest a price slump and reassert control over pricing and supply. That pushed major miners like Glencore and China’s CMOC into force majeure situations.

In October last year, Kinshasa replaced the blanket ban with a quota system, limiting total cobalt exports and aiming to better manage global supply and prices. But they were set too low for the year 2026-27, and unused 2025 allocations can be carried into early 2026. The quotas restricted the availability of export cobalt, tightening global supply and pushing prices up. Exactly what the DRC wanted to happen. But the prices went nuts, jumping up 160 % annually, incentivizing stock-releases from private inventories like Weisfisch’s.

Israeli metal trader Rami Weisfisch, infamous for a long property battle with his younger brother, is known for his involvement in the global cobalt and minor metals markets. He served as President of Minor Metals Inc., a U.S. company, and earlier led Metal Resources Group (MRG), a Bahamas-registered metal trading firm that operated mainly out of London. And through this company, he controlled a significant portion of the world’s cobalt supply, reportedly around 30% of annual production in 1999. He had the foresight, bought low and ruled the roost.

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And this transaction with Glencore,marks Weisfisch’s longstanding role in the market and is seen as the end of his roughly 50-year involvement in cobalt trading.

This isn’t the end of Glencore’s involvement with cobalt, but is a definite tapering down.

The company has publicly stated that copper production will take priority over cobalt in the DRC under export quota rules because copper exports are not restricted and offer better immediate commercial returns. In its latest earnings, the company issued firm copper output ranges for 2026 but withheld cobalt forecasts due to quota uncertainty. Earlier this month, Glencore also entered a non-binding agreement to sell a 40% stake in its DRC copper-cobalt assets to a U.S.-backed consortium, Orion Critical Mineral Consortium (Orion CMC). That deal is part of the broader partnership between the U.S. and the DRC to open DRC minerals to western investors and reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains.

With export quotas to government partnerships, cobalt went from being a niche industrial byproduct to a critical mineral. And in the process, became less trader-driven and more state-controlled. Weisfisch’s retirement from cobalt comes with a great exit ramp. Prices have rebounded, there are buyers and it’s too complicated to hold.

Glencore directly added this inventory to Project Vault to push and secure strategic raw materials domestically. And ultimately, all of this is so the global metal supply chain won’t be controlled by China. But unfortunately for everyone involved, China still has to process the cobalt.

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