Analysis of long-term statistical data of cobalt flows in the EU

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Authors

Long-term statistical data was explored, acquired, processed, and analysed in order to assess the historical domestic production and international trade of a number of cobalt-containing commodities in the EU. Different data sources were examined for data, such as the British Geological Survey (BGS), the US Geological Survey (USGS), and the Eurostat and UN Comtrade (UNC) databases, considering all EU-member states before and after they joined the EU. For the international trade, hidden flows related to data gaps such as data reported in monetary value or recorded as “special category” were identified and included in the analysis. In addition, data from the Finnish customs database (ULJAS) was used to complement flows reported by Eurostat and UNC. From UNC, data was obtained considering the member states as reporters or as partners of the trade, due to internal differences of the database. Based on the acquired data the domestic production and international trade of the commodities were reconstructed for the timeframes 1938–2018 and 1988–2018, respectively. Next to the analysis of the trend of the production and trade of the different commodities, the importance of including hidden flows was revealed, where hidden flows represented more than 50% of the flow of a year in some cases. In addition, it was identified that even from reliable data sources, strong differences (more than 100% in some cases) can be found in the reported data, which is crucial to consider when utilizing the data in research.

Original languageEnglish
Article number105690
JournalResources, Conservation and Recycling
Volume173
Number of pages12
ISSN0921-3449
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10.2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

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    Research areas

  • Cobalt, Critical raw materials, Domestic production, International trade, Long-term statistical data