Invest more than 23 billion yuan in a week and reach 850000 tons of this lithium material "big eruption".

In the era of preparing for TWh, battery companies are expanding production on a large scale.

Among them, Ningde era 2025 production capacity planning reaches 670GWH, BYD 2025 production capacity planning exceeds 600GWH, China New Airlines 2025 production capacity planning 500GWhA, Honeycomb Energy 2025 capacity planning 600GWH, Yiwei Lithium Energy 2023 will complete 200GWh capacity, Guoxuan Tech 2025 capacity planning 300GWh. The expansion of production by the giants has brought a huge demand for lithium battery materials.

As soon as we enter 2022, a large number of lithium anode materials projects have been launched. On January 7th, Hunan Mianyu Fuji New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. and the management committee of Yulin Longtan Industrial Park held a contract signing ceremony for the project with an annual output of 150000 tons of lithium-ion battery anode materials. The total investment of the project is expected to be about 4.4 billion yuan, of which the first phase will mainly build a 50, 000-ton / year-scale cost-effective negative material project, and the second phase will mainly build an integrated negative-electrode project of 100000 tons / year.

A day earlier, the first meeting of the headquarters of the 300000 ton battery anode material project of Shanghai Shanshan Technology Co., Ltd. was held in Anning City, Yunnan Province on January 6 to promote the establishment of the project. The total investment of the project is 12 billion yuan, of which 10 billion yuan is fixed investment, and the total construction period is about 36 months. Two days ago, Shanshan 200000 tons / year lithium battery anode material integration base project just started. The project, with a total investment of 10 billion yuan, will be built in two phases with a production capacity of 100000 tons per year.

Also on January 6, the signing ceremony of the project with an annual output of 50,000 tons of lithium battery anode materials in Anxiang County, Changde, Hunan Province, was held, led by Hunan Xin Entropy New Materials Technology Co., Ltd., with a total investment of 800 million yuan.

Prior to this, on January 4, Ya'an and Synchronize of the province held the launching ceremony of major projects in the first quarter of 2022. On the same day, Ya'an 10 billion lithium anode material industrial park also opened the prelude to construction in Lushan County. The total investment of the project is 6 billion yuan, which will form the production capacity of 350000 tons of lithium anode materials per year.

According to the rough statistics of Battery China, the amount of money involved in the above projects alone is more than 23 billion yuan, and the planned capacity is up to 850000 tons, and it is concentrated within one week, which shows the heat of expanding the production of negative electrode materials.

Anode material is one of the key materials in the manufacture of lithium battery. with the rapid development of new energy vehicle industry, the demand for anode material is increasing rapidly. According to the forecast of the industry, the global demand for lithium anode materials is expected to be 480000 tons in 2021, and this demand is expected to reach 1.34 million tons by 2025, with a scale of 43 billion yuan. The 5-year compound growth rate of (CAGR) is as high as 27%, of which the scale of artificial graphite is more than 30 billion yuan, accounting for 71%.

At present, China accounts for more than 80% of the negative electrode production capacity in the global anode material market. From the perspective of the market pattern, the open source securities research newspaper pointed out that the domestic anode materials industry is highly concentrated, showing a competitive pattern of "three big and five small". The "three big" respectively refers to Betteri, Cedar shares and Zichen Technology, and the "five small" respectively refers to Kaijin Energy, Zhengtuo Energy, Shenzhen Snow, Hunan Star City, and Xiang Fenghua.

In recent years, with a large amount of capital into the lithium material industry, lithium anode manufacturers have expanded production, the total production capacity of domestic negative materials has expanded rapidly, while the product homogenization competition is fierce. And the overall capacity utilization of negative materials is not high, structural surplus appears, and the capacity of high-end products is still in short supply.

Industry analysis points out that at present, there are many domestic negative material production enterprises, which will inevitably lead to the intensification of market competition. In the future, the market competition pattern of negative materials will focus on the competition among the leaders, the low-end production capacity will be gradually cleared, the enterprises with core technology and superior customer channels will get more market share, and the market concentration will be further enhanced.

At present, the anode materials of lithium battery can be divided into artificial graphite, natural graphite, and some new materials, such as silicon carbon, mesophase carbon microspheres, lithium titanate and so on. At present, some companies have begun to use silicon carbon in anode materials. Tesla has applied silicon carbon anode to Model3, that is, adding 10% silicon to artificial graphite, and then its negative electrode capacity and monomer energy density have been increased.

According to Battery China Network, at present, many domestic material enterprises are actively arranging silicon-carbon anode materials. Beitri, Shanshan shares, Jiangxi Zichen, Shenzhen Snow, Zhongke Electric, Jiangxi Zhengtuo, Sibao Technology, Chuangya Power, Dalian Lichang and so on are actively promoting the industrialization of silicon-carbon negative electrodes.

As one of the earliest enterprises to mass-produce silicon-based anode materials in China, Bertre's silicon-carbon anode materials have broken through to the third generation products, and the specific capacity has increased from the first generation 650mAh/g to the third generation of 1500m Ahram g, and the fourth generation silicon-carbon anode materials with higher capacity are being developed.

In November 2021, Sibao Technology announced that the company plans to invest 560 million yuan to build a 10, 000-ton / year silicon-carbon anode material project for lithium batteries in Pengshan Economic Development District, Sichuan Province. On November 3, Shida Shenghua announced that the company's 1000 t / a silicon-carbon anode material production equipment and supporting storage and transportation facilities have been installed and passed the completion acceptance, and the follow-up will enter the stage of trial production.

Industry insiders point out that silicon-carbon anode materials can greatly improve the energy density of lithium batteries because of their large specific capacity, which is the development direction of the new generation of anode materials. Lithium electrocarbon silicon anode material is not only the best anode material at present, but also the best matching anode material for ternary cathode material at present. Compared with graphite anode materials, the biggest advantage of carbon-silicon anode materials lies in the increase of specific capacity, and the industry is generally optimistic about the future development of the industry.