500,000 Yuan/ton, Lithium Carbonate Air Refueling

After 5 months, the price of lithium carbonate returned to 500,000 yuan/ton mark!

Shanghai Securities News reporter learned from many parties, the average price of lithium carbonate market statistics of many third-party platforms this week has broken through 495,000 yuan/ton, straight to 500,000 yuan/ton mark. In the spot market, lithium carbonate single transaction price has broken 500,000 yuan/ton, the highest has reached 520,000 yuan/ton. At present, upstream and downstream point-to-point lithium carbonate long contract price is more than 493,000 yuan/ton.

Several institutions said that in recent years, downstream lithium battery manufacturers expanded faster than upstream lithium supply increment, which leads to lithium supply in the short and medium term continues to be in a relatively tight situation, lithium supply and demand balance still needs some time.

Lithium carbonate demand 'air refueling'

Benefiting from the rapid growth of the terminal new energy vehicle market, the price of lithium carbonate from the second half of last year "on the rocket". In March this year, the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate exceeded 500,000 yuan/ton.

Due to the impact of public health events, the market boom has declined since April, and the price of lithium carbonate once dropped to 460,000 yuan/ton. Since August, downstream procurement, stock demand renewed, lithium carbonate prices rose rapidly.

"The return of the lithium carbonate spot price to the 500,000 yuan/ton mark is expected, and the market has expected this since mid-year." Wuxi out of the class of information technology development Co., LTD. New energy lithium power division research and development director Wu Huaimin told Shanghai Securities News reporters that the current situation of lithium salt supply and demand mismatch has not fundamentally changed. Currently, lithium manufacturers are busy delivering long-term contracts, and spodumene and recycling battery waste cannot effectively solve the problem of insufficient production materials. Some time ago, Sichuan, one of the main production areas of lithium salt, also affected part of the supply to a certain extent.

According to Wu Huaimin, the current demand expansion rate of downstream new energy vehicles and energy storage field is still improving, "gold nine silver ten" consumption season to boost demand, downstream enterprises are actively stocking up. In the production capacity plan released this year alone, the capacity of lithium iron phosphate exceeded 2.467 million tons and the capacity of terpolymer materials exceeded 260,000 tons, according to Fubao data. Therefore, in the future quite a long time, lithium demand is strong.

“碳酸锂的价格上涨了,所以这里h recently that our quotations for big customers will definitely go up accordingly." South China a large lithium salt producer relevant person in charge of Shanghai Securities News reporters said. The company's lithium carbonate sales to bulk, spot quotation reference third-party platform. For some major customers with long-term supply, the two sides will regularly negotiate the selling price, but the pricing basis is mainly based on the third party's quotation.

The person in charge proposed that the company is optimistic about the tight pattern of lithium salt sales in the second half of the year, and the price of lithium carbonate is expected to be high in the second half of the year. Lithium carbonate prices declined in the second quarter, but the company anticipated a rebound in the market in the third quarter, so it reduced some foreign sales at that time.

500,000 yuan/ton -- important psychological early warning line

The price of lithium carbonate will return to 500,000 yuan/ton again, which will undoubtedly cause greater cost pressure on downstream cathode materials and battery manufacturers, which has also attracted the continuous attention of the regulatory layer.

Feng Meng, deputy director of the raw material Industry department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at a press conference on September 2 that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has promoted stable production and supply in key industries, established a linkage monitoring mechanism for the price of key raw materials, and guided the price of key products such as lithium carbonate and rare earth to stabilize.

"For the market, 500,000 yuan/ton is an important psychological warning line." Wu said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) proposed on September 2 to set up a mechanism to monitor the price of key raw materials, which will guide lithium carbonate prices to stabilize. It is expected that the price of related lithium products will be close to or exceed 500,000 yuan/ton, but the pace will slow down.

Behind the upward price of lithium carbonate, there are raw material cost support. Recently, imported lithium ore resources are increasingly in demand. Spodumene concentrate spot prices rose $50 a tonne to $5,250 a tonne, up 6 per cent from a month earlier, according to data released by Shanghai SteelLink on September 6.

In early August, Pilbara Mines, an Australian lithium miner, closed at $6,350 a tonne in a new auction of lithium concentrate. It is estimated that the cost of converting this batch of lithium concentrate into 1 ton of lithium carbonate equivalent is about 450 thousand yuan/ton. The lithium concentrate products are expected to enter the market in November-December.

Strengthen the deployment of ore prospecting action to ensure supply in many areas

In the rapid development of new energy and new materials today, lithium is known as the "white oil" of the new era. As a big new energy country, it is urgent for China to strengthen the development and guarantee of resources.

Xing Tao, deputy director of the Department of raw Materials Industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at a press conference on September 2 that enterprises should be guided to develop scarce domestic resources such as iron, copper and lithium and advantageous resources such as graphite in an orderly manner, so as to strengthen the role of domestic resources as "ballast stones" and the ability to provide basic support. We will accelerate the development of iron, lithium and other mineral resources, improve the level of intensive mining, intensive processing and recycling of renewable resources, and foster a number of upstream and downstream integrated leading enterprises and industrial clusters.

In order to strengthen the guarantee capacity of lithium and other strategic mineral resources, recently, a new round of prospecting action has been deployed in many places.

The People's Government of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region recently issued the "Master Plan of Mineral Resources of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (2021-2025)" pointed out that the implementation of non-energy mineral exploration breakthrough, increase the intensity of exploration rights in key exploration areas, with niobium, tantalum, rare earth, lithium, rubidium and other "three rare" minerals as the main attack minerals. We will focus on important ore gathering areas and important prospecting prospect areas, highlight the investigation of important emerging minerals and large quantities of minerals in short supply, and improve the resource guarantee capacity of important minerals.

The Master Plan for Mineral Resources of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (2021-2025), released by the People's Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, proposes that the sustainable supply of mineral resources will be further enhanced by 2025. On the basis of improving the supply capacity of strategic bulk mineral resources, we will actively promote the development and utilization of rare metals such as lithium beryllium, fluorite and silica raw materials and other non-metallic strategic emerging minerals.

高级分析师Yu Yakun军的新能量n of Beijing Antaike Information Co., LTD., said that with the rapid development of China's new energy vehicle industry, the bottleneck problem of upstream raw materials has been paid more attention. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has repeatedly proposed to improve the support capacity of lithium, nickel, cobalt, platinum and other key resources, and moderately accelerate the development progress of domestic lithium, nickel and other resources. It is imperative to accelerate the development of domestic lithium resources.