hina's Refined Bismuth Output Assessment for October at 10.5% MoM Increase

This week in the second-life battery market, LFP B-grade prices remained stable, while ternary high C-rate, low ampere-hour B-grade specifications showed an upward trend. Cost side, cobalt salt prices remained steady, while lithium chemicals prices rose significantly due to demand boost. Supply side, driven by factors such as the release of year-end installation rush demand in the ESS market and an increase in overseas orders, coupled with sustained growth in the EV sector, demand for battery cells continued to climb, leading to a certain reduction in the supply scale of the second-life battery market. Demand side, upstream raw material prices generally remained high, and downstream markets had long relied on just-in-time procurement. At the same time, the impact of previous cobalt salt price increases gradually transmitted to the end-use market, against which some enterprises showed increased acceptance of price hikes, boosting ternary B-grade prices this week.

In industrial production, high-carbon ferrochrome, as a key alloy additive, has a wide range of applications. However, China's ferrochrome market is relatively passive: on the upstream side, it is restricted by scarce chromite resources, with an external dependence of over 99.8%; on the downstream side, approximately 90% of high-carbon ferrochrome flows into the stainless steel sector, among which more than 80% is settled through long-term contracts, guided by the bidding prices of mainstream steel mills. Meanwhile, in recent years, the high-carbon ferrochrome industry has been plagued by severe overcapacity, leading to increasingly fierce market competition and significantly greater price fluctuations. Against this backdrop, after long-term accumulation and in-depth market research, SMM officially launched the High-Carbon Ferrochrome Steel Bidding Price Expectation Index. This index aims to more truly and effectively reflect the current market dynamics of the chrome market, predict market price expectations in advance, and reduce transaction risks and costs.