Musk "turn manganese into gold": which companies hold "manganese material" under the structural shortage of battery demand or a surge of 10 times?

In early trading on the 30th, the lithium battery plate rose, many of which only led stocks related to cathode materials. By noon, Red Star Development, Xiangtan electrified trading board, Rongbai Technology, German Nano rose more than 8%.

Behind this, the cathode material industry ushered in "manganese material"--

After Musk mentioned the favor of manganese-based cathode a few days ago, manganese for batteries attracted market attention. The latest report of CITIC Securities also pointed out that with the increase in the permeability of new manganese-based cathode materials, the amount of manganese used in lithium batteries will increase by more than 10 times from 2021 to 2035, and manganese raw materials for batteries are prone to structural shortage.

Nowadays, the upgrade of electrochemical system is very core, while manganese-based cathode materials have significant advantages in energy density, raw material supply and cost. In the upgrade route of lithium positive electrode, cobalt-free battery, lithium ferromanganese phosphate battery and lithium-rich manganese base are all related to manganese.

Among them, cobalt-free battery has long been a major upgrade direction of ternary battery route.

Mr Musk has also said that it is relatively simple to use 2/3 nickel and 1/3 manganese as cathode materials, so battery capacity is expected to increase by more than 50 per cent with the same amount of nickel; Panasonic revealed last year that it had begun to develop cobalt-free batteries. Honeycomb energy has achieved mass production and matching loading of cobalt-free batteries, and there are only two main elements of nickel and manganese in its cathode materials.

Lithium ferromanganese phosphate battery is an important upgrade route of lithium iron phosphate battery, and its industrialization has begun to accelerate gradually. Soochow Securities has predicted that the technology is expected to be mass produced in the first half of 2023.

Generally speaking, there are three main factors behind the rise of lithium manganese phosphate battery: 1 its own performance advantage, lithium manganese phosphate has the advantage of iron lithium at the same time, it can increase the energy density by 20%. With the increase of policy subsidies for new energy vehicles, the low-cost advantage of lithium manganese phosphate is highlighted. 3 domestic battery and cathode manufacturers have also begun to reserve lithium ferromanganese phosphate upgrade technology, and the number of related patents is rising rapidly.

As for lithium-rich manganese, it is regarded as the "most promising" cathode material for power batteries after lithium iron phosphate and ternary at ultra-high ideal energy density. However, due to the low efficiency, poor rate performance and poor cycle stability of lithium-rich manganese-based charge and discharge, continuous voltage decline will occur in the process of charge and discharge. So to some extent, the technology is still in an "ideal state".

Generally speaking, with the rapid growth of shipments of ternary cathode materials and lithium manganate materials, the demand for battery-grade manganese sources is also rising rapidly. Citic Securities expects that the amount of manganese used in lithium cathode materials will exceed 300000 tons in 2025, with a compound growth rate of 32 percent in 2021-2025, and is expected to exceed 1.3 million tons in 2035, more than 10 times that of 2021.

However, in the face of the high growth demand of the lithium electricity industry and the high base demand of the iron and steel industry, the growth rate of the upstream manganese resource supply side is difficult to catch up with the upstream and downstream steps.

Although the total amount of manganese ore resources in China is high, but the grade is low, so the degree of import dependence is at a high level. In 2021, due to the influence of many factors in the industry, the output of electrolytic manganese plummeted by 200000 tons, and the price rose by more than 200% when supply fell short of demand, significantly higher than other manganese products. Citic Securities pointed out that due to the commonly used electrolytic manganese acid solution production of battery-grade manganese sulfate, the supply disturbance of electrolytic manganese will lead to a structural shortage of battery-grade manganese sulfate.

It is worth mentioning that Xiangtan electrification also revealed on the investor interactive platform a few days ago that at present, the company's electrolytic manganese dioxide products are mainly sold under short-term contracts, and the price of the products has been adjusted according to market changes due to factors such as the sharp rise in raw materials and energy costs.

Analysts suggest laying out around two main lines, first, the enterprises that take the lead in the research and production of new manganese-based cathode materials, and secondly, manganese product manufacturers whose business extends to downstream battery materials.

Among A-share manufacturers, except for the four stocks mentioned at the beginning of the article:

Huayou Cobalt Co., Ltd. Huayue has an annual output of 60, 000 tons of nickel metal. Manganese sulfate can be obtained from the wet laterite nickel ore project after processing. After the project reaches production, the product contains about 10000 metal tons of manganese per year.

Nachuan has taken a stake in Xingheng Power supply, whose business is based on manganese series multi-component lithium composite technology, and the products are mainly used in light electric vehicles, electric vehicles, communication energy storage and other fields.

Tianyuan Co., Ltd. Lithium iron manganese phosphate cathode material is in the pilot stage, and the new production line of lithium iron phosphate cathode material is fully compatible with the production line of lithium iron manganese phosphate cathode material.

Jinshan Mining, a subsidiary of Shengda Resources, has built a production line of manganese sulfate monohydrate with a production scale of 35000 tons per year. After further purification, the high-purity manganese sulfate is mainly used to prepare the precursor of new energy battery cathode ternary material (lithium nickel cobalt manganate).