【SMM analysis】Lithium Battery Recycling Market Sluggish Post-Chinese New Year, Prices Show Mixed Trends

SMM Feburary 26 News:
 

After the Chinese New Year, most lithium battery recycling enterprises remained in a wait-and-see mode, with a cold market. On the raw material side, this week, lithium carbonate and nickel sulphate prices continued to rise, while cobalt sulphate prices remained stable.

This week, by material type, for LFP hydrometallurgy: taking LFP pole piece black mass as an example, the current price of LFP pole piece black mass is 6,150-6,650 yuan/mtu, with the price center up MoM from before the holiday. As time moved into the post-Chinese New Year period, both futures and spot prices of lithium carbonate continued to rise, and some upstream LFP recycling enterprises began to quote higher prices, with a certain volume of transactions; most downstream hydrometallurgy recycling enterprises are still observing, but overall sentiment has clearly shifted upward, and they indicated that there are plans for just-in-time procurement at the beginning of March, which is next week. For ternary and LCO, the nickel and cobalt payables of ternary pole piece black mass are around 78%-80%, and the lithium payables are around 77%-78%. Due to relatively small changes in nickel and cobalt prices, ternary enterprises have a strong wait-and-see attitude, but currently, some upstream recycling enterprises have started to quote high prices for sales, and market sentiment has slightly improved, with prices temporarily stable.