The link that the lithium price is "fiercer than the tiger" may be the way to break the game.

It is crazy to sum up the changes in the price of raw materials for power batteries in 2021, leaving the deepest memories for battery companies.

Rush crazy-can explain the current domestic power battery companies to quickly release production capacity, the desire for upstream materials.

In 2022, under the promotion of automobile electrification and "double carbon" strategy, the market demand for power and energy storage battery will continue to be strong, which is bound to stimulate the upstream power battery material end as a whole to maintain a high boom.

Take lithium carbonate as an example. The latest market data show that on February 16th, the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate exceeded 420000 yuan / ton to 422000 yuan / ton, an increase of 10, 000 yuan / ton over the previous day.

"it has increased by nearly ten thousand a day! We can't find the goods yet! " It has become the common feeling of battery industry chain enterprises.

In fact, during the period of New Year's Day this year, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has exceeded 300000 yuan / ton. Over the next 40 days, prices have risen by about 33%.

On the demand side, a number of global head battery companies, including Ningde era, LG New Energy, BYD, Honeycomb Energy, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Guoxuan High Tech, Vision Power, Northvolt, Xinwanda, Lishen Battery, China Chuang Xinhang and other global head battery companies will have a planned production capacity of more than 3000GWH by 2025, and the demand for lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide and other lithium materials will increase significantly.

According to institutional estimates, in the next five years, the contradiction between supply and demand in China's lithium carbonate market will still be difficult to balance. In 2022 alone, there will be a supply gap of about 7% in China's lithium carbonate market.

Coincidentally, the prices of not only lithium carbonate, nickel and cobalt, but also the key materials for batteries that require lithium, remain high.

In order to stabilize the supply of raw materials, in the past two years, under the leadership of leading enterprises including Ningde era, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Yiwei Lithium Energy, LG New Energy and so on, there has been a wind of "ore sweeping" around the world, aimed at stabilizing the reserves of raw material resources.

It is worth noting that, on the whole, the proportion of imports of main raw materials of power batteries in China is still large, and the degree of external dependence is very high.

Take lithium resources as an example. Although China is the fifth largest lithium resource country in the world, lithium resources are mostly distributed in ecologically fragile areas such as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with inconvenient transportation and difficult development, so about 80% of lithium needs to be imported from Australia, Chile and other countries. However, with the tightening of the policy of lithium country of origin, Chinese enterprises will also face many uncertain risks in importing lithium products.

In addition, the import dependence of key resources such as nickel and cobalt lithium batteries is as high as 90%.

On the one hand, the global demand for lithium batteries continues to rise under the goal of automobile electrification and carbon neutralization; on the other hand, there are security risks in the supply of raw materials; and the prices of lithium carbonate, nickel, cobalt and other products are generally high. Under the influence of comprehensive factors, the recovery of lithium salt, nickel, cobalt and other materials from waste power batteries has become an industry with great economic value and prospects.

Theoretically, 0.23 tons of lithium carbonate can be recovered per ton of lithium iron phosphate and 0.38 tons of lithium carbonate can be recovered per ton of ternary materials. With the improvement of recovery technology, the recovery rate of resources will be greatly increased. Recently, Ningde Times said, "the company's lithium recovery rate has exceeded 90%, and lithium recovery has played a certain role in supply guarantee." It also indirectly shows the role of lithium recovery in the guarantee of resource supply and the improvement of cost competitiveness.

But the road to recycling is still blocked and long.

Data show that the global supply of lithium resources will be about 540000 tons in 2021. According to the source, the supply of spodumene is about 44%, the supply of lithium extracted from salt lake is about 39%, and the recovery supply is only about 2%. Industry bodies predict that global demand for lithium resources will reach about 1.7 million tons by 2025, when the proportion of recycled supply is expected to rise to about 8 per cent.

From the perspective of market development space, the data show that by 2020, the domestic cumulative decommissioned power battery exceeded 200000 tons, and the market scale reached 10 billion yuan. In 2021, the sales of new energy vehicles in China completed 3.521 million, an increase of 1.6 times over the same period last year, maintaining rapid growth, and the installed capacity of power batteries is also close to 160GWh. there is no doubt that power batteries will continue to maintain a high growth rate in the next few years. According to the current technology, the average service life of power batteries is about 6 years. With the improvement of market penetration of new energy vehicles, the number of power batteries decommissioned year by year will increase rapidly, and the recycling field will reach a market scale of hundreds of billions in the next few years.

Whether it is to meet the supply of raw materials, or to pursue economic value, or to enhance cost competitiveness, many enterprises have begun to set foot in the field of recycling, and a small number of enterprises have been laid out early.

In August last year, Yiwei Lithium Energy and Funeng Science and Technology, together with Grimme, will work together to build a full life cycle value chain system for the recovery, recycling and remanufacturing of waste power batteries and their wastes. form a complete green industry chain for power batteries and their waste recycling, nickel-cobalt-lithium recycling, ternary material recycling, and cascade utilization of power batteries.

In October of the same year, Ningde Times announced that the company would invest in the construction of an integrated battery material industry park project in Yichang City, Hubei Province, involving functions such as the recycling of waste battery materials, with a total investment of no more than 32 billion yuan. Prior to this, Ningde era has established the Bang Pu recycled battery business, and has begun to take shape.

In the same year, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Honeycomb Energy, Nandu Power and other areas also continue to increase the layout of decommissioned battery recycling and other areas.

In addition, including Huayou cycle, Greenmi, Bangpu cycle, Haopeng Technology, Xiamen Tungsten Industry, surpassing Technology, Jinyuan shares and other upstream materials, recycling enterprises, it is also increasing investment in the recovery of lithium carbonate, nickel, cobalt and other key materials in decommissioned batteries.

It is worth noting that if decommissioned batteries are not better recycled, it will also cause ecological pollution. With the gradual increase in the scale of retirement, the government is also strengthening guidance and support in this field. Policy-side signals have been sent out frequently. On February 10, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other eight departments jointly issued the implementation Plan for accelerating the Comprehensive Utilization of Industrial Resources, which relates to the field of recycling of power batteries, emphasizing the need to build a recycling system for decommissioned power batteries, and promoting the research and development of related detection, disassembly, valuable metal extraction and other technologies.

In December last year, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation also released information that the tax rebate ratio for the waste battery recycling industry will be increased from 30% to 50%. It can be seen that guidance and support is the trend of the times.

Based on the rising economic value, reducing the dependence on imports, reducing environmental pollution and other factors, the recycling of decommissioned power batteries is an unavoidable link. Although there are still many difficulties in China, such as unstable supply of decommissioned power batteries, lack of system management, high cost of waste liquid treatment and so on, this is a necessary question of "double carbon". A number of enterprises have accumulated practical experience in the industry as forerunners. Look forward to the future will have more domestic enterprises to participate in it, to expand the industry "cake" at the right time.