As the key raw materials for the production of lithium batteries, lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide have become the "food" for powerful battery companies.
Since the beginning of this year, a number of battery companies, including Ningde Times, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Guoxuan Tech, and other battery companies have begun to buy shares or acquire upstream lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide material manufacturers, and by setting up joint ventures and increasing capital, further help the acquisition target to carry out a new round of capacity expansion.
Power battery enterprises have entered the upstream material industry one after another, and there are many practical considerations behind it.
From the point of view of the supply side, on the one hand, the price of lithium battery materials is rising rapidly, which squeezes the profits of battery enterprises. According to SMM spot quotations, by the beginning of July, battery-grade lithium carbonate was quoted at 87500 yuan / ton, battery-grade lithium hydroxide at 94000 yuan / ton, while battery-grade lithium carbonate and battery-grade lithium hydroxide were quoted at 53000 yuan / ton and 49500 yuan / ton at the beginning of the year, up 65.09% and 89.90% respectively from the beginning of the year.
On the other hand, due to the current capacity gap of lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide, most lithium carbonate enterprises are in a state of full production and full sales. Some institutions predict that the capacity gap of lithium carbonate will reach 5% Mel 10% in 2021, and lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide will be in a tight supply for the whole year.
From the demand side, the rapid growth of production and sales of new energy vehicles and power batteries, as well as the stock of lithium battery materials based on market expectations will also "rise all boats".
According to data from the China Automobile Association, from January to June this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in China completed 1.215 million and 1.206 million respectively, a year-on-year increase of two times. It is worth noting that the permeability of new energy vehicles increased from 5.4% at the beginning of the year to 9.4% at the end of June, indicating a rapid increase in the permeability of new energy vehicles. The China Automobile Association expects that sales of new energy vehicles for the whole year are expected to reach 2.4 million, an increase of nearly 80% over the same period last year.
Reflected in the power battery side, that is, the power battery production and installed capacity of Synchronize has increased significantly. Data show that from January to June this year, China's power battery production totaled 74.7 GWH, an increase of 217.5% over the same period last year, and the installed capacity was about 52.5 GWH, an increase of 200.3% over the same period last year.
From the perspective of planning and layout, the global demand for power batteries will exceed 1000GWH by 2025. For this reason, head battery companies have carried out capacity layout. The production capacity of head battery companies is planned to be above 200GWh by 2025. The demand for lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide and other key materials for lithium batteries will remain high in the next few years.
In order to ensure a stable supply of raw materials and reduce costs, including Ningde era, Yiwei Lithium Energy, BYD, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Tesla and other battery and mainframe factories have participated in the upstream lithium resources card war.
Yiwei Lithium Energy: 1.8 billion Yuan invested in Lithium Carbonate and Lithium hydroxide projects
After winning orders from domestic and foreign mainframe factories such as BMW, Daimler, Hyundai and Xiaopeng, and cooperating comprehensively and deeply with front-line car companies, Yiwei LiNeng is "working hard" in the layout of power battery capacity.
In June this year, Yiwei LiNeng announced that it will build an annual 104.5GWh power storage battery industrial park, including the completed capacity 11GWh, the capacity under construction 11GWh and the proposed phased construction capacity 82.5GWh. If you take into account the capacity of the 10GWh soft package battery, as well as the SKI27GWh, and the 10GWh energy storage project jointly built with Lin Yang, as well as the cylindrical battery and xHEV project for small power, the capacity of Yiwei lithium battery is close to 200GWh.
Under the premise of high deterministic growth of customers and orders, one of the key tasks of Yiwei LiNeng this year is to lay out the upper reaches of the industrial chain and to create a sound and reliable supply chain, on the one hand, to ensure a stable supply of all kinds of raw materials, and second, to optimize costs.
The layout of Yiwei Lithium Energy upstream this year
Since the beginning of this year, Yiwei LiNeng has arranged lithium iron phosphate positive electrodes and high nickel positive electrodes respectively through joint ventures with German Nano and Bertre, and has completed the layout of upstream cobalt resources and nickel resources by taking a stake in Huayou Cobalt Industry.
In terms of lithium resources, Yiwei Lithium Energy also made a big move in early July. On July 9, Yiwei LiNeng issued two announcements: one announcement said that the company planned to acquire a 28.125% stake in Jinkunlun Lithium Industry with an annual production capacity of no more than 1.8 billion yuan and invest no more than 1.8 billion yuan in the construction of an annual lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide project; another announcement said that the company intends to invest 110 million to acquire a 5% stake in Dahua Chemical Co., Ltd. the main thing is that Dahua Chemical owns the mining right in Dachidan Salt Lake.
The acquisition of shares in Jinkunlun lithium industry and an investment of 1.8 billion yuan further improved the layout of lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide materials, while the acquisition of Dahua chemical shares further mastered more upstream lithium resources.
In the context of the company's large-scale capacity expansion, the improvement of the supply chain layout can undoubtedly help the company to better guarantee quantity and price, so as to achieve rapid and steady development.
Guoxuan Hi-Tech: invest more than 10 billion yuan to "lock up the mine"
According to Guoxuan Hi-Tech's plan, its power battery capacity will exceed that of 100GWh by 2025. In fact, after Volkswagen bought a stake in Guoxuan, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, which has the "strength", is also very active in the layout of the industrial chain.
In March this year, Guoxuan Hi-Tech and the Yichun municipal government signed an investment cooperation agreement in Hefei, and the two sides signed a contract on the establishment of a joint venture mining company and the landing of the industrial park project.
On May 22, the kick-off meeting of Guoxuan Hi-Tech Yichun Lithium Power New Energy Project was held in Yichun Economic and technological Development Zone. It can be seen that the layout of Guoxuan Hi-Tech in the upstream is positive and urgent. It is understood that the Guoxuan Hi-Tech Yichun lithium new energy project, with a total investment of 11.5 billion yuan, will be built in two phases, mainly engaged in mine resources development, lithium carbonate extraction, lithium battery R & D and manufacturing, energy storage system development, and so on, to build the whole industry chain system of power batteries.
The layout of Guoxuan Hi-Tech in Yichun not only enables it to master the most critical "lithium ore resources" for lithium battery production, but also can extract lithium carbonate on its own and realize the autonomy of lithium carbonate. it is expected to further improve the ability to ensure the supply of raw materials and cost control.
Ningde era: 120 million shares in Tianhua Super net increase locked Lithium hydroxide Project
In fact, as the global power battery leader, Ningde era in the upstream lithium resources layout earlier, and more extensive. Ningde Times participated in lithium resources investment in North American lithium industry and other overseas companies in 2018, and then participated in lithium mining and lithium carbonate projects in Canada's Neo Lithium, Australia's Pilbara and other companies.
At present, the global planned production capacity of power batteries in Ningde era has exceeded 500GWh. with such a huge capacity, the demand for raw materials and equipment is also huge. To this end, Ningde era spent about 20 billion yuan on the investment layout of the industrial chain in 2020 and this year respectively.
The Ningde era has also made a lot of moves on raw materials such as lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide since the beginning of this year.
In April this year, Tianhua ultra-net disclosed the results of fund-raising, Ningde era to 120 million yuan to participate in fund-raising. It is understood that Tianhua ultra-net raised a total of 780 million yuan, will be used for battery-grade lithium hydroxide phase II project construction.
In fact, as early as 2018, Ningde era and Tianhua Chaojing, Yibin Tianyuan Group and other joint investment to set up Tianyi lithium industry. In March, Tianyi transferred a 10 per cent stake in Tianyi Lithium to Ningde Times, which now holds a 25 per cent stake in Tianyi Lithium, whose main products are lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide.
In fact, under the background of high demand for new energy vehicles and power batteries, the power battery capacity planning and layout of global leading enterprises basically start with 100 GWH, and the demand for upstream raw materials will be increasing in the future. In the face of tight supply and demand and frequent price increases in the upstream raw materials, it is expected that more battery companies will cut in in the future. It is not difficult to imagine that with the entry of battery enterprises, the market competition pattern of upstream material enterprises will also change a lot.
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