Who Owns the Batteries?

The Paradox

The Democratic Republic of Congo produces 84% of the world's cobalt. Australia mines more lithium than any other country. Indonesia dominates nickel. Chile sits on vast lithium reserves. South Africa controls 75% of global manganese.

None of these countries controls the battery economy.

Why do countries that own the minerals rarely own the industry? That is the question this investigation sets out to answer.

The pattern repeats across continents and commodities: nations that extract raw materials export them at low margins while the processing, manufacturing and intellectual property that create real economic value concentrate elsewhere.

Tracing why this happens, and whether it can be reversed, matters for anyone trying to predict who will control the clean energy economy.

This is the paradox at the centre of the 21st-century energy system. The battery, without which EVs cannot replace combustion engines and solar cannot deliver power after dark, has become the most strategically contested manufactured product on earth.

Revenues across the battery value chain will surpass $400 billion by the end of this decade.³ Global demand reached 1.2 TWh in 2025, with projections exceeding 3 TWh by 2030.¹

And yet the nations that pull the raw materials from the earth are rarely the nations that capture the economic value those materials create. Africa produces the cobalt. Latin America holds the lithium reserves.

But the jobs, the factories, the intellectual property, and the strategic power sit elsewhere. Who owns the batteries is not a question about minerals. It is a question about power.

Batteries are instruments of industrial policy, energy security, economic competitiveness and geopolitical influence. They stopped being simple products years ago.

This investigation traces one battery from mine to recycling plant, asks who captures value at each stage, and examines why the answer should concern anyone who cares about the future of clean energy.

Follow One Battery

To understand who owns the batteries, follow one. A 75 kWh lithium iron phosphate pack, the kind fitted to a mid-range electric vehicle in 2025, costs roughly $8,100.

Its journey spans four continents, passes through at least six countries, and touches every fault line in the global energy transition.

One battery. Four continents. And at every stage where the most value is created, where the strategic decisions are made, where the technology resides, one country dominates. Mining and deployment are distributed. Everything in between is concentrated.

But how did this concentration happen? And can it be undone?

The Hidden Empire

Open a battery pack from a German car, a Japanese truck, or an American pickup. Peel back the aluminium casing.

Inside, you will find a product that was almost certainly assembled in China, from materials refined in China, using processes that China increasingly restricts from export.

China manufactures 77% of the world's battery cells. It refines 73% of global lithium and 80% of cobalt. It processes 90% of all graphite anode material.^1,2,4 This concentration did not happen by accident. It was engineered over three decades through deliberate industrial policy.

In the early 2000s, Beijing identified electric vehicles and energy storage as strategic industries.

The government subsidised domestic EV buyers on the condition they used Chinese-made batteries, provided cheap land and loans to manufacturers, funded university research, and erected regulatory barriers that shut foreign battery makers out of the Chinese market for most of the 2010s.

Simultaneously, Chinese companies acquired mineral assets overseas: lithium in Australia and Chile, cobalt in the DRC, nickel in Indonesia. They built processing plants at a speed Western firms could not match, backed by cheaper labour, less restrictive regulation and abundant coal-fired electricity.

Vertical integration on this scale has few parallels in modern industrial history. CATL, founded only in 2011, now supplies Tesla, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai. In 2025, CATL's battery installations totalled 464.7 GWh, giving it 39.2% of the global market.

BYD, the second-largest manufacturer at 16.4%, mines its own lithium, refines its own cathodes, makes its own cells, and installs them in its own cars.¹⁹ Together, these two companies hold 55.6% of the global battery market.

China's installed manufacturing capacity already exceeds global demand by a factor of 2.7.⁵⁵ This overcapacity is strategy, not miscalculation. It creates pricing pressure that makes it economically irrational for competitors to build factories.

And Beijing has shown it is willing to use supply as a weapon.

In October 2025, China imposed export controls on lithium-ion cells above 300 Wh/kg, cathode materials, and graphite anode materials. The licences gave Beijing an effective veto over high-performance battery technology transfers.⁵⁶

One month later, following a Trump-Xi bilateral meeting, China suspended the controls for one year, framing the move as a goodwill gesture.⁵⁷ Beijing's message was clear: these materials can be weaponised at will, and the suspension itself is a tool of coercion.

In July 2025, the Ministry of Commerce restricted the export of LFP cathode preparation processes, lithium carbonate techniques, and gallium processing technologies.²³ Any foreign product containing 0.1% or more of Chinese-origin rare earths now potentially requires a licence.

This extraterritorial reach mirrors the logic of US semiconductor export controls. Beijing is not merely protecting its market share. It is preventing competitors from learning how to compete.

Economics reinforces the moat. Chinese battery packs averaged $84/kWh in 2025. American packs cost $133.

European packs cost $131.⁵³ That $49 gap is the economic moat protecting China's position, and it widens every year that overcapacity drives further cost reductions while Western factories are still ramping up.

Chinese producers have already crossed the $100/kWh threshold at which EVs reach manufacturing cost parity with combustion engines. The rest of the world has not.

But mining and manufacturing are only two dimensions of control. The real question is where value is created, and whether the countries that possess the minerals can ever capture a meaningful share of it.

Countries That Dig vs Countries That Win

Every critical mineral follows the same pattern. Mining captures roughly 5-10% of total battery value chain revenue. Refining and chemical processing capture 15-20%. Cell manufacturing captures 25-30%. The real money, the jobs, and the strategic power all sit downstream of the mine.³

A risk matrix makes this dependence vivid. Cobalt and graphite sit at the extreme end of concentration risk, both mined and refined in a way that creates single points of failure.

A disruption at any of these chokepoints, whether from political instability, natural disaster, or deliberate export restriction, would ripple through the global battery supply chain within weeks.⁸

Battery chemistry is shifting in ways that reshuffle these resource advantages.

LFP now accounts for 64% of global EV batteries, according to BNEF, up from less than 10% in 2020.⁸ Because LFP uses iron and phosphate instead of cobalt and nickel, the DRC's bargaining power weakens with every percentage point of LFP market share.

Sodium-ion batteries, now entering series production at CATL and BYD, use no lithium at all, potentially reducing Australia's strategic position.

But manufacturing for both LFP and sodium-ion remains overwhelmingly concentrated in China. The chokepoint moves, but it does not disappear. And new chemistries create new questions about who will build the factories, set the standards, and control the intellectual property that defines the next generation.

If the battery value chain were a river, the mineral-rich countries would be the headwaters, contributing raw volume. China would be the dam, controlling flow and direction. Everyone downstream depends on decisions made at the dam. That is the structural problem.

The question facing the US, Europe, the UK, and every aspiring battery nation is whether they can build their own infrastructure fast enough to matter.

Can the Rest Catch Up?

Not quickly. Not cheaply. And not without confronting an uncomfortable trade-off between speed of decarbonisation and strategic autonomy.

The United States has responded with the most significant industrial policy in a generation. The Inflation Reduction Act's Section 45X provides $35/kWh for domestically manufactured cells.

Since its passage, roughly $110 billion in battery investments have been announced across 13 states. Seven major gigafactories came online or began production in 2025-2026.^24,25

The 45X credit survived the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed on 4 July 2025, though with new restrictions prohibiting credits for components produced with assistance from "prohibited foreign entities."⁵⁹

But America has almost no domestic lithium refining at scale, minimal graphite processing, and nascent cathode production. Permitting timelines for new mines average 7 to 10 years.

Ford's Michigan LFP plant is being built under a technology licence from CATL, meaning China's largest battery maker is literally teaching America's second-largest automaker how to make batteries. America has the money and the market. What it lacks is three decades of manufacturing learning.

Washington's friend-shoring strategy is producing results. The US-Australia Critical Minerals Framework committed $2 billion in bilateral financing.²⁶ Canada's Critical Minerals Production Alliance made 26 investments in its first year.²⁸ But these alliances secure raw materials, not the processing capacity where value and control reside.

The persistent mistake in Western battery strategy is to conflate mineral access with supply chain security. Owning the mine is not the same as owning the supply chain.

Europe is attempting regulation as strategy.

The EU Battery Regulation mandates recycled content minimums and supply chain due diligence. From February 2027 it adds a digital Battery Passport tracking every cell's provenance from mine to market.³¹

The Critical Raw Materials Act requires that by 2030, at least 40% of the EU's critical mineral processing be domestic.³²

Ambition is real. Execution is troubled. Northvolt, Europe's flagship battery champion, filed for bankruptcy in early 2025.²⁹ The company burned through billions while struggling to achieve consistent cell quality and manufacturing yields. Its collapse is a warning.

Building a battery manufacturing base is harder, more capital-intensive and more technically demanding than policy documents suggest.

US tariffs on Chinese batteries, now effectively 82% combined, have redirected Chinese oversupply into Europe. Prices there compressed 17%.⁵⁸ European manufacturers face a pincer: shut out of cheap Chinese supply by nascent EU protectionism, yet undercut on price by Chinese exports diverted from America.

The United Kingdom illustrates the challenge facing smaller economies. Britishvolt collapsed in early 2023, but the UK has regrouped. AESC's gigafactory in Sunderland supplies Nissan, and Agratas (a Tata subsidiary) is building a 40 GWh facility in Somerset.

The Faraday Institution has made sodium-ion a strategic priority, betting that the UK can build competitive advantage in a chemistry where it does not need to compete head-to-head with China's lithium-ion machine.

Altilium secured £18.5M to build the UK's first commercial EV battery refinery in Plymouth, processing 24,000 batteries per year with 74% lower emissions than mined alternatives.

Chinese battery firms invested $143 billion in overseas EV and battery ventures between 2014 and 2025.²¹ Hungary has absorbed $18 billion in Chinese battery investment, becoming a bridgehead into Europe. Indonesia received $22 billion, tied to nickel processing.

Morocco secured Africa's first battery gigafactory in a $5.6 billion deal with Gotion High-Tech.²² Chinese manufacturers are not waiting for tariff walls to close. They are building inside the walls, diffusing manufacturing capacity while retaining control of technology, standards, and intellectual property.

Which raises the question that mineral-rich developing nations have been asking for decades: if the factories are moving, can Africa finally capture a share of the value its resources create?

Africa's Fork in the Road

The DRC holds 55% of global cobalt reserves. South Africa controls 75% of manganese. Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mali sit on significant lithium deposits. In the battery economy's language, Africa is rich. In its reality, Africa is a quarry. So far.

Africa's mineral wealth is being extracted and processed elsewhere, replicating patterns that African leaders have been trying to break for decades. Chinese companies control 8 of the DRC's 14 largest cobalt mines. Technology and management expertise remain largely Chinese. Profits are repatriated.

Processing plants built with Chinese capital produce intermediate products, like lithium sulphate or cobalt hydroxide, designed for export to Chinese cell manufacturers, not for an African battery industry.³³

There are signals of change. The DRC-Zambia Special Economic Zone for EV manufacturing aims to process cobalt and copper domestically.³⁴ Morocco's Gotion gigafactory, when operational, will be Africa's first cell manufacturing facility. South Africa's manganese reserves position it for the LMFP chemistry wave.

Nigeria has moved further than most on the policy side. Abuja banned raw lithium ore exports in 2022 and extended the ban to unprocessed nickel, chromium, manganese and tantalite in 2023, exempting only companies that build local processing capacity.

In early July 2026 President Tinubu commissioned the Diamond New Energy plant at Endo in Nasarawa State, described as West Africa's largest lithium processing facility. It carries a $250 million price tag and capacity of 6,000 tonnes of ore a day.⁶⁶

Look at who owns it. The plant was built by the Chinese firms Juling and Canmax, and the same partnership operates a second facility in Ogun State.

Solid Minerals Minister Dele Alake has stated the long-term goal plainly: batteries, electric vehicles, phones and solar panels manufactured in Nigeria.

The distance between that goal and this plant is the argument of this report in miniature. Nigeria has moved the crushing step onshore without moving the ownership.

The output specification has not been made public, so whether the facility yields battery-grade chemicals or an intermediate bound for Chinese cell makers is not yet a matter of record.

Beneficiation rules change where value is added. They do not on their own change who captures it.

Moving beyond extraction requires several conditions to align at once. Mineral processing is energy-intensive, so it starts with reliable electricity, then transport infrastructure and technical training at scale.

It also needs regulatory frameworks that balance resource nationalism against investment appeal, and political commitment to industrial policy that outlasts electoral cycles.

The gap between aspiration and implementation remains wide.

Latin America faces a parallel dilemma. The "Lithium Triangle" of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia holds 56% of the world's identified lithium resources.³⁸ Chile now requires all new lithium contracts to operate as public-private partnerships.

Bolivia signed a $1 billion agreement with a Chinese-led consortium including a CATL subsidiary to build direct lithium extraction plants.³⁹ Argentina has fully liberalised its sector, attracting investment but ceding control. None of these countries has significant cathode production, cell manufacturing, or chemical refining.

They produce 30% of global mine lithium and capture almost none of the downstream value.

Who Really Owns the Batteries?

Not the countries that mine the minerals. Not the automakers that install the packs. Not the consumers who buy the cars.

Ownership, in the sense that matters, the ability to control supply, set prices, restrict access, and determine who else can participate, resides at the midstream: refining, chemical processing, component manufacturing, cell assembly, and the intellectual property that binds them together.

Today, that midstream belongs to China. Chinese companies produce 77% of the world's cells, refine 73% of lithium and 80% of cobalt.

Manufacturing and processing are the visible layers. The deeper hold is the integrated system of know-how, supply relationships, equipment manufacturing, and standards-setting that constitutes the battery economy as a whole.^1,2,4

But ownership is not destiny. Three forces are reshaping the balance of power, and none has fully played out.

Chemistry will diversify. LFP has already reduced the strategic importance of cobalt. Sodium-ion, now entering production, will reduce dependence on lithium for cost-sensitive applications.

Solid-state batteries, if Toyota, Samsung SDI and QuantumScape deliver on 2027-2028 timelines, will create new competitive dynamics.⁴⁵ Iron-air technology, targeting 100 hours of grid storage at a fraction of lithium-ion cost, could reshape stationary storage entirely.⁴⁶ Each new chemistry reshuffles the deck of resource advantages.

No single mineral will serve as a universal chokepoint by 2035.

Recycling will become a second supply chain. The global battery recycling market is projected to reach $50 billion by 2033.⁴⁷ New hydrometallurgical processes recover over 95% of critical metals and cut environmental impact by at least 58% against virgin mining.⁵¹

By 2050, recycled materials could supply 35-60% of the critical minerals needed for new batteries.

The mine of the future is the millions of EV batteries reaching end of life in the 2030s and 2040s. But the recycling supply chain faces the same concentration risk: China currently holds 89% of refining capacity for recycled battery materials.⁵⁰

The world will fracture, and new layers of ownership will emerge. Neither the US nor Europe will reverse the protectionist turn. The US has imposed a combined 82% tariff on Chinese lithium batteries.⁶⁵ The economic, security, and political logic are all aligned.

Chinese manufacturers will respond by building factories inside tariff walls, diffusing manufacturing while retaining control of technology and IP. The result will not be one battery economy but several, with different standards, different supply chains, and different strategic vulnerabilities.

Beyond Minerals: Where Ownership Is Moving

The assumption that mineral control determines battery leadership deserves closer scrutiny. Over the next decade, new forms of strategic advantage will emerge that are harder to mine, harder to copy, and potentially more valuable than any deposit of lithium or cobalt.

Software and battery management systems determine how efficiently cells charge, discharge, and degrade. The OEM that masters battery software captures recurring revenue and customer lock-in, regardless of who made the cells.

Standards and certification, particularly the EU Battery Passport launching in February 2027, will create regulatory moats that favour producers who can demonstrate full supply chain traceability. Recycling IP, the specific processes for efficiently recovering battery-grade materials, will become as strategically important as mining concessions.

And financing, the ability to underwrite the multi-billion-dollar capital expenditure required for gigafactories, determines who can enter the market at all.

Ownership of the battery economy is not a single question with a single answer. It is a layered contest, playing out at the mineral, processing, manufacturing, technology, regulatory and financial layers simultaneously. China leads at most of these layers today.

Whether it leads at all of them in 2035 depends on decisions being made now, in Washington, Brussels, London, Kinshasa, Canberra and Seoul.