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The Ford Motor Company, IBM, RCS Global, Huayou Cobalt and LG Chem are considering employing blockchain to track and corroborate ethically sourced minerals. They aim to create an open, industry-wide network to track and confirm minerals and other significant materials for the automotive and consumer electronics sectors in their supply chains.
According to a
reports by Forbes, the first work will deal with creditworthy sourcing of industrially-mined cobalt.
Lisa Drake, Vice President, Global Purchasing and Powertrain Operations, Ford Motor Company revealed:
"We remain obligated to transparency across our global supply chain."
"By working with other top industries in this network, our aim is to use state-of-the-art technology to guarantee the materials we produce for our vehicles."
Cobalt
Cobalt, a hard ferromagnetic silver-white bivalent or trivalent metallic element, is abnormal demand due to its wide use in lithium-ion batteries. These power a series of products ranging from laptops to mobile gadgets to electric vehicles.
In the 2017 report,
Morgan Stanley said that by the year 2026, demand will increase 8-fold, especially for those types of devices. For instance, a standard electric car battery needs around 10 Kgs of cobalt; 30 grams of the same mineral.
In a traditional manner, miners, smelters and consumer marques depend on third-party audits to set up
Distributed with these assessments, distributed ledger technology (DLT) provides the outlook of the network partakers and immutable data Additionally, the use of DLT can help network players to manage compliance needs.
Since the first focus is on large scale miners (LSMs), the main objective of the team is to help raise transparency in artisanal & small-scale mining (ASMs). Raw materials in the world market; and fulfill their internationally sanctioned responsibility needs.
Effectively, the DLT network can assist ASM operators: partners with due diligence data providers; and thus join a DLT-based network of formalized actors.
High Demand for Cobalt
The DLT pilot will also delve into the use of incentives for ASMs and their local people wedged by mining.
The CEO of Huayou Cobalt, Chen Hongliang, revealed:
"As a top worldwide battery material provider, we are very proud to have an
OECD Due Diligence Program and active community support initiatives in place linked to our activities in the DRC. This is fundamental to our proactive approach to presenting ethical cobalt. "
The plans for the governance board, typing individual members within these industries, to assist the platform's development, functionality and allegiance to democratic rationale and principles.
