Lithium-ion battery output up 9.4% YoY in Jan-Nov

The China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) reported that crude steel output across major mills in China averaged 2.4 million mt per day in the last ten days of April, up 3.25% from mid-April and up 19.27% from the same period a year ago.

The China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) reported that crude steel output across major mills in China averaged 2.21 million mt per day in the last 11 days of March, down 0.16% from mid-March and up 20.98% from the same period a year ago.

With the advancement of the NEV industry, battery technologies has become the highlight in the New Energy Cobalt-Lithium industry, especially the solid-state battery considering its outstanding performance in energy density and safety. 

On November 2, the highly-anticipated Development Plan for the New Energy Vehicle Industry (2021-2035) was unveiled, which was not only a good news for the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry, but also a boost to cobalt demand.

Cobalt stockpiling will continue, supporting cobalt prices. Inventories of cobalt raw materials will not be high in the near term with the restocking demand ahead of the National Day holidays.

The recent torrential rains across Sichuan and areas such as Leshan, Aba and Ya’an has caused a negative impact on the production of silicon mills and polysilicon mills.

Planned output of construction steel rebar across China’s major blast furnace steelmakers is estimated to fall 3.32% from the realised production in July to 8.88 million mt in August, showed an SMM survey. 

China’s copper cathode output shrank in July as some smelters conducted maintenance to deal with shortage of copper concentrate.

Refined tin output in China continued to recover in June, as demand picked up with the resumption of work overseas. Downstream orders improved from the previous months even as they failed to rise to levels of the same period last year.  

According to statistics from the United States Geological Survey in 2015, the world's proven land cobalt resources were about 25 million mt, with reserves of 7.2 million mt. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia and Cuba accounted for 68% of the global cobalt reserves. Congo (Gold) is the country with the most abundant cobalt reserves. As of 2014, cobalt reserves in Congo stood at 3.4 million mt, accounting for more than 50% of the world’s total.