Tibet Mining Industry plans to implement a 10,000-ton battery-grade lithium carbonate project for comprehensive development and utilization of salt lakes in the first half of the year.

SMM: today, Tibet Mining released its results for the first half of 2021. According to the financial report, the company achieved a total operating income of 230 million yuan in the first half of the year, an increase of 59.7% over the same period last year. The net profit belonging to shareholders of listed companies was 42.514 million yuan, compared with the same period in 2020 and-32.095 million yuan in the same period in the first half.

Public data show that during the reporting period, the company is mainly engaged in chromite, lithium ore mining, processing and sales and trading business. From its business structure, "chromium products" is the main source of revenue, its total revenue is 120 million, accounting for 55.4% of the total revenue, lithium products account for 44.6% of the total revenue.

The report shows that the lithium products of Tibet Mining are mainly produced by Zabuye, Tibet, and the company has the exclusive right to exploit the salt lake. It is the first lithium mine salt lake in Asia and the third largest in the world. At present, its proven lithium reserves are 1.841 million tons. It is reported that the concentration of lithium in the brine of Zabuye Salt Lake in Tibet is second only to that of Atacama Salt Lake in Chile, and its lithium taste ranks second in the world. Because of its unique natural lithium carbonate solid resources, the salt lake is easy to form different forms of natural lithium carbonate deposits, so it has more outstanding resource advantages than other similar salt lakes in the world. The mining cost is 20% lower than other domestic salt lakes, and the cost advantage is very obvious. It is reported that in 2021, Zabuye Salt Lake in Tibet intends to increase the annual production capacity of lithium concentrate to about 7000 tons.

It is worth mentioning that the night before the release of the financial results, Tibet Mining announced that the company intends to implement the Zabuye Salt Lake green comprehensive development and utilization of 10,000 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate project for the holding subsidiary Tibet Zabuye Lithium Industry High-Tech Co., Ltd. It is reported that the project adopts the technical route of salt field evaporation + membrane separation technology + crystallization evaporation technology to extract lithium. In the process, it will not produce toxic and harmful three waste products, will not introduce any impurity ions, and will not have a negative impact on the salt lake. The company plans to invest 1.9998054 billion yuan in the second phase of Zabuye project in Tibet.

Specifically, the project plans to produce electric carbon 9600 tons / year, industrial carbon 2400 tons / year, potassium chloride 156000 tons / year, rubidium and cesium mixed salt 156000 tons / year (discount: rubidium chloride 9.6t, cesium chloride 3t). The project aims to be completed by the end of July 2023 and put into production by the end of September.

With regard to the reasons for the company's development of battery-grade lithium carbonate, Tibet Mining said frankly that since October 2020, the explosion in the field of new energy vehicles has led to a continuous increase in the installed capacity of lithium batteries, in the context of a shortage of raw materials for lithium mines. lithium salt supply side and demand side showed a tight balance, lithium carbonate prices began to continue to rise.

According to the spot quotation of SMM, as of August 26, the price of domestic battery-grade lithium carbonate has broken through the 100000 yuan mark and continued to rise, reaching 106000,109,000 yuan / ton, with an average price of 107500 yuan / ton, up 67250 yuan / ton from October 2020, an increase of 167.1%.

"Click to view the spot market of SMM metal.

SMM recent research shows that the domestic mainstream smelters are short of cash, and some of them are available for spot manufacturers. At the same time, the quotations have risen significantly, with industrial-grade lithium carbonate rising to 110000 yuan / ton and battery-grade lithium carbonate rising to 11.5-120000 yuan / ton. At the end of August, there has been a gap in the procurement of raw materials by mainstream material manufacturers in September, the production expansion of iron and lithium is more obvious, and the market price is dominated by the upstream. It is expected that the transaction price of lithium carbonate will rise significantly. "View details