Short-term supply of diaphragm exceeds demand and becomes another bottleneck in lithium industry.

Recently, Enjie shares, Xingyuan material, Jinli shares and other head diaphragm enterprises have increased production capacity, Hengli Petrochemical, Sequoia Capital and other industrial new forces or well-known institutions have also set foot in, the diaphragm industry ushered in a new round of development opportunities.

In the critical stage of "big work and quick progress" in the lithium power industry, the capacity utilization rate and quality rate of the diaphragm link have been fully improved, but because the diaphragm industry has the characteristics of high barriers to entry and long production cycle, it still falls short of supply in the short term, and accumulates the power to raise prices.

Over the past year, the prices of positive, negative and electrolyte have risen sharply, and only the price of the diaphragm has not been moved. Now the diaphragm has begun to break the balance, add fuel to the flames, and become another bottleneck in the development of the industry, making the volume of the lithium industry more and more intense.

01 the production cycle has reached 24 months

Diaphragm is a rare link in the lithium industry that still relies on imported equipment.

At present, the main equipment suppliers of the diaphragm industry are Japan Steel Institute, Toshiba of Japan, Master of Korea, Bruckner of Germany and so on. Mainstream diaphragm enterprises basically rely on the above imported equipment suppliers, and there are only a few domestic lines in the industry.

At the time of the sudden acceleration of the global lithium power industry, due to the influence of foreign production capacity and delivery cycle of equipment, the production cycle of the diaphragm industry is longer, and the delivery cycle is generally more than 18 months, coupled with the chemical properties of the diaphragm industry. Equipment commissioning and climbing cycle is longer, the current production cycle has been as long as 24 months.

The production cycle of diaphragm has exceeded that of photovoltaic silicon with chemical properties, and the production cycle of photovoltaic silicon is about 18 months. The impact of cycle mismatch of photovoltaic silicon on the photovoltaic industry in 2021 has shuddered.

Similar to photovoltaic silicon, the production cycle mismatch of the diaphragm, which leads to short-term supply falling short of demand, is also having an impact on the lower reaches of the lithium industry.

02 short-term supply exceeds demand

The capacity cycle of the diaphragm has reached 24 months, while the cycle of the downstream lithium power industry is only 6-9 months. When we see that the downstream lithium power production capacity "dry up quickly", the upstream diaphragm is doomed to be in short supply.

Recently, Shanghai Enjie, a subsidiary of Enjie, signed a "prepayment agreement" with Ningde Times, agreeing that Ningde Times should pay 850 million yuan in advance to Shanghai Enjie. It is used to ensure that Shanghai Enjie supplies power battery wet separators (base membrane and coated film) to Ningde Times and its subordinate companies in 2022, with a total amount of about 5.178 billion yuan excluding tax.

Enjie previously said on the interactive platform that the diaphragm capacity is expected to be 45-5 billion square meters in 2021, the production capacity is expected to reach 7 billion square meters in 2022, and the delivery capacity will reach 45-5 billion square meters, if the corresponding lithium battery production exceeds 300GWh in 2022 according to 15 million square meters / GWh,.

Even so, the gap still tends to be tense on the demand side.

Ningde Times and Enjie shares are the leaders of lithium electricity industry and diaphragm industry respectively, and they are also industrial chain partners with strategic cooperative relations at the capital level. now in Ningde era, Party An is even more humble than Party B by paying in advance.

Not only in the Ningde era, Shanghai Enjie recently signed the 2022 guarantee and supply Framework Agreement with China Chuangxin Airlines, promising to supply no more than 2.5 billion yuan of lithium battery isolation film to China Chuangxin Airlines, and China Innovation Airlines will pay 100 million yuan in advance to Shanghai Enjie.

These signs show the shortage of lithium diaphragm. The head lithium enterprises even put down their posture and rush to buy the diaphragm, and the pressure on the supply chain faced by other small and medium-sized lithium enterprises in the procurement diaphragm is self-evident.

This also reflects the supply chain management ability of leading enterprises such as Ningde era in response to the expected rise in raw material prices. Long order locking can guarantee both quantity and price, and can contribute profits to enterprises in a disguised form under the background of rising diaphragm prices.

It can be expected that for a period of time in the future, the diaphragm will continue to be in short supply, and some lithium power enterprises will face the dilemma of "no rice pot", thus affecting the effective capacity release of downstream lithium power enterprises.

03 the production capacity has been fully released, and there is already a basis for price increase.

Among the four main materials of lithium electricity, diaphragm was the only industry that did not increase prices significantly last year.

Why did the diaphragm not increase the price?

The main costs of the diaphragm industry are equipment, materials, energy and labor. Material cost, energy cost and labor cost are all variable costs, and the fluctuation range of unit cost is small. The equipment investment with relatively high cost is a fixed cost, so scale, capacity utilization and quality rate are the key factors that affect the cost.

Diaphragm industry in the last round of lithium cycle, a large range of expansion. In the view of many new entrants, as long as there is equipment, they can dry the diaphragm, and the barriers to entry do not seem to be high, but the actual situation is that the diaphragm industry has obvious "chemical properties" and has higher understanding of equipment and higher requirements for technology. for this reason, a large number of diaphragm capacity has been reduced to excess capacity and idle or eliminated. In this competitive environment, the capacity utilization rate of the head enterprise at that time was not high.

Over the past year, the lithium industry has recovered, the diaphragm demand has continued to increase, the scale effect has become more and more obvious, the capacity utilization rate has gradually increased, and scale has also promoted the gradual increase of the rate of good products. these factors enable the stock capacity to continue to contribute to effective supply.

The acquisition and integration of head enterprises is also an important path for the release of stock capacity utilization.

Jinli signed a framework agreement with Shuangjie Electric in December last year to acquire a 100% stake in Tianjin Donggao membrane through stock exchange. In addition, Jinli acquired Anhui Xinheng in April last year and successfully completed the integration. Jinli shares have high-quality customers such as BYD, Ningde Times, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Ruipu Energy and so on.

Relying on technology and market advantages, head enterprises purchase and integrate stock capacity, optimize stock and improve industry capacity utilization, which is an important way to solve the lack of capacity in diaphragm industry in the short term. however, there are higher requirements for talent reserve, technology accumulation and equipment understanding of the acquirer. The ability of M & An integration has also become an important dimension of the competition of head-diaphragm enterprises.

However, as the overall capacity utilization and quality rate of the diaphragm industry have been fully excavated, there is still a bottleneck in capacity supply, coupled with the rapid increase in downstream lithium demand, resulting in the contradiction that the supply of diaphragm falls short of demand.

Although the diaphragm price did not rise significantly last year, the profit margin increased significantly depending on the continuous improvement of capacity utilization and quality rate.

Enjie shares, for example, had a gross and net profit margin of 48.56% and 34.42% respectively in the first three quarters of 2021, compared with 40.65% and 26.19% in the same period last year.

Even so, other leading enterprises have experienced showers after a long drought, the utilization rate of production capacity and the rate of quality products have been greatly improved, and the gross profit margin has improved significantly.

It can be seen that after the utilization rate of diaphragm capacity and the rate of quality products have gradually reached the limit, the contradiction that supply falls short of demand begins to appear, the pricing mechanism changes, and the diaphragm price gradually has the basis for price increase after stagflation for nearly a year.

The actual situation is that the price of the diaphragm has begun to rise recently and is expected to continue, further aggravating the current potential of the lithium electricity industry.