Enjie plans to invest 4.5 billion yuan in the construction of lithium diaphragm project head enterprise to speed up the "horse race enclosure"

On March 29, Enjie shares announced that it had signed an Investment Agreement and a supplementary agreement with the people's Government of Hongta District, Yuxi City. Enjie plans to set up a company in Hongta District of Yuxi City as the main body of the project to invest in the construction of a lithium battery isolation film production project with an annual capacity of 1.6 billion square meters, with a total investment of about 4.5 billion yuan. The project will be built in two phases, with an investment of about 2.4 billion yuan in the first phase and a diaphragm production project with an annual capacity of 800 million square meters, which is expected to be completed and put into production by the end of December 2024; the second phase is planned to invest about 2.1 billion yuan. It is proposed to build a diaphragm production project with an annual capacity of 800 million square meters.

It is understood that on February 16, Enjie shares signed a "New Energy Battery whole Industry chain Project Cooperation Agreement" with Yuxi Municipal people's Government, Huizhou Yiwei LiNeng, Zhejiang Huayou Holdings, Yunnan Yuntianhua and other companies, agreeing that all parties jointly set up two joint ventures in Yuxi City to jointly promote the formation of hundreds of billions of new energy battery industry chain clusters in Yuxi City.

Enjie shares said that this investment is not only a substantial promotion of the landing of the "New Energy Battery Industry chain Project Cooperation Agreement", but also will help to further enhance its lithium battery separation membrane production capacity, in order to better meet the needs of downstream customers.

In terms of customers, public information shows that Enjie has entered into the supply chain of global mainstream battery companies, and has established cooperative relations with lithium battery head enterprises such as Ningde Times, BYD, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Funeng Technology, LG New Energy, Panasonic, Samsung SDI and so on.

As one of the four main materials of lithium battery, diaphragm accounts for about 8% of battery cost. 10%. Benefiting from the surge in demand for lithium batteries downstream, the diaphragm market has maintained a high demeanor for a long time.

From the perspective of supply and demand, due to the long production expansion construction cycle of the diaphragm industry, it takes about two to three years. At the same time, the global production capacity of diaphragm equipment is limited and there is a capacity bottleneck. According to the agency's forecast, the supply of the gap will remain tight in the next few years. Downstream lithium battery companies also have the same judgment, locking the diaphragm supply in advance has become the consensus of lithium battery head enterprises.

In November last year, Ningde Times and Enjie shares signed a cooperation agreement, and the two sides planned to jointly invest 8 billion yuan to set up a platform company, mainly engaged in dry and wet separation membrane projects; in August last year, Yiwei LiNeng and Enjie shares planned to set up a joint venture company in Jingmen, planning to build 16 lithium battery diaphragm production lines, with a total investment of about 5.2 billion yuan.

As a wet diaphragm head enterprise, Enjie shares not only set up a joint venture with the head battery company to build a diaphragm production base, further bind the head battery enterprise, but also actively expand its own production capacity. Since 2021, Enjie has announced active production expansion in Chongqing, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Suzhou, Yuxi and other places.

In fact, not only Enjie shares, Xingyuan material, Cangzhou Pearl, Pu Tailai, Sinopec, Wachovia New Materials and other materials enterprises have large-scale diaphragm-related expansion actions in 2021. Among the lithium battery companies, Xinwanda's enterprises also announced last year that they would put into production the basement membrane coating project. The progress of overall industrialization is expected to accelerate.

However, some people in the industry believe that with the development of research and development technology from semi-solid batteries to solid-state batteries, the emergence of solid-state batteries in the future may have a greater impact on the diaphragm market. Of course, based on the goal of power battery industrialization in China, the energy density of quasi / all-solid-state battery will reach 500Wh/kg by 2035. Before that, liquid batteries and semi-solid batteries still have a lot of room for development and a long time to develop, and the prosperity of the diaphragm industry may still be maintained for a long time.