The bidding war over Canadian lithium company Millennial has finally come to an end, the target of the Ningde era. In response to the news that Canadian lithium company Millennial Lithium Corp said on Tuesday local time that Ningde Times had agreed to buy the company for C $377 million (1.92 billion yuan), Ningde Times confirmed to the Financial Associated Press that it had signed a 100% equity agreement with the former.
Millennial has two world-class lithium salt lake projects in Argentina and currently has about 4.12 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent. Ningde Times also said today that the acquisition is an important measure in the layout of the company's supply chain and will further ensure the long-term and stable supply of lithium raw materials in the Ningde era.
CATH, a Ningde-era shareholding company, will invest $240 million (1.552 billion yuan) in Manono, an African lithium mining project, Sept. 28. According to AVZ Minerals, the Australian mineral exploration company that developed the project, Ningde Times will provide more than $400 million (about 2.58 billion yuan) after the development cost is verified. In addition, the two companies may continue to work together to assess the feasibility of developing lithium hydroxide facilities.
Data show that the Manono project is one of the largest lithium resource projects in the world, with estimated lithium reserves of 400 million tons and lithium oxide grade of 1.65%, which is also at a high level. According to the feasibility report released by AVZ in April 2020, the design capacity of the Manono project includes an annual production capacity of 700000 tons of lithium oxide with a design life of 20 years.
With the advent of TWh era, the security of resource supply chain is the top priority.
The strong demand downstream is the main reason for the repeated layout of lithium faucets upstream. As China has developed into the world's largest manufacturer of electric vehicles in recent years, China's demand for lithium batteries is increasing. Ningde era has recently expanded production frequently, and a number of brokerages have reported that its planned production capacity in 2025 is 500-600GWh. The production capacity of other head power battery enterprises generally strides forward to the 100GWh volume.
According to GGII's forecast, shipments of lithium batteries in China are expected to increase nearly five times in 2025 compared with 2020, which requires the scale of supporting materials to move to more than 100000 tons. This means that the scale of the expansion of the upstream supply chain before use has been far from meeting the demand, which puts forward higher requirements for capital investment, capacity planning, production line deployment and so on. as a result, power battery companies are forced to participate in the layout of the upstream more deeply.
In this context, the layout of upstream lithium ore resources has become an important means for lithium battery manufacturers to maintain the security of the supply chain. Considering the continuous rise in material prices, leading manufacturers have become more urgent.
According to media reports, since the beginning of this year, the market for new energy vehicles and lithium batteries has continued to be hot, and the prices of raw materials for lithium batteries have reached record highs. Lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide and electrolytes have all risen to varying degrees. Among them, the price of lithium carbonate products is now close to 190000 yuan / ton, up more than 50% in the past month, up 23.3% from the price of about 57000 yuan per ton at the beginning of the year.
According to incomplete statistics, Ningde era directly or indirectly participated in more than 20 upstream materials companies, through holding, mergers and acquisitions, deep binding to deepen the control of lithium battery upstream raw materials. In addition to the Ningde era, domestic and foreign head power battery companies such as Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Yiwei Lithium Energy and LG Chemistry have also accelerated the layout of upstream resource products. Mining companies Ganfeng Lithium Industry and Luoyang Molybdenum Industry are also said to have joined the Millennial battle.
Wang Baoqing, an analyst at Huachuang Securities, said that the short-term price increase reflects a tight supply, and the record high lithium price may be just a new starting point. In the medium term, the rapid growth of demand driven by new energy vehicles aggravates the supply gap, and the rising trend of lithium prices remains unchanged. In the long run, the high-speed growth of sales of new energy vehicles in China in the future is relatively certain, the demand for lithium-nickel-cobalt-copper foil is expected to grow high, lithium ore is limited by resources or continues to have a gap, and the high demand for precursors such as lithium-nickel-cobalt copper foil may lead to the growth of the company's performance. Lithium resource with scarcity attribute and quantity-price double logic is the first choice, followed by processing stock volume logic.
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