BMW says it is seeking clarification following a report of environmental and health and safety violations at a cobalt mine in Morocco.

The company has approached the supplier Managem and requested additional information from the company, a BMW spokesperson told the Reuters news agency on Sunday. "If there is any misconduct, it must be remedied."

The BMW spokesperson went on to say that the first allegations against Managem had already arisen in the summer. At the time, the company had provided BMW with documents that looked credible. The mine operator's environmental certificates were up to date, he added.

An inquiry to Managem requesting a statement initially went unanswered.

The "Süddeutsche Zeitung", NDR and WDR reported that there were serious violations of environmental and occupational health and safety regulations at the mine in Morocco. For example, significantly excessive levels of arsenic were found in water samples. In addition, Managem is not complying with international standards for the protection of workers and is taking action against critical trade unions. Managem is majority-owned by the Moroccan royal family and, according to its own information, operates a number of mines in several African countries.

Cobalt is needed for electric car batteries, among other things. By far the largest part of the world's cobalt deposits are located in the Congo, where child labor still occurs, especially in small mines. For this reason, BMW no longer sources cobalt from the Congo, said the BMW spokesperson. The Munich-based company sources around a fifth of its cobalt requirements from Morocco; the rest comes from Australia.

(Report by Christina Amann, with assistance from Vera Eckert, edited by Christian Rüttger. If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at Berlin.Newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or Frankfurt.Newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)