Weekly Recycling Project Updates:
This week in wet process recycling: Recycled materials: Cobalt sulfate prices continued to decline this week, nickel salt prices remained stable, while lithium salt prices saw a minor rebound. Recovery rates for ternary and lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) black mass continued to fall, while lithium content in lithium iron phosphate (LFP) black mass remained temporarily steady. Taking ternary black mass as an example: Currently, due to the prolonged low price of lithium carbonate, the revenue contribution from lithium is lower than that from nickel sulfate and cobalt sulfate under these conditions. Therefore, most ternary wet-process enterprises now price the nickel-cobalt and lithium recovery rates in ternary black mass separately. For instance, the current recovery rate for nickel-cobalt in ternary electrode sheet black mass is 74-76%, while the lithium recovery rate is 71-74%.
On the demand side, most wet-process plants maintained partial shutdowns amid the continuous decline in nickel, cobalt, and lithium salt prices, consuming only basic inventory, reducing external procurement frequency, and offering low external quotations, resulting in very thin market activity. On the supply side, crushing plants and traders showed some flexibility in their target selling prices following the ongoing decline in salt prices. Black mass prices largely followed the downward trend of salt prices, but the rate of decline lagged behind the pace of salt price drops.
Moreover, as crushing plant profits currently remain below the breakeven line, some have opted to withhold stocks, awaiting a potential market recovery, further contributing to thin market transactions. Cost-wise, currently, aside from leading integrated wet-process plants, most wet-process operations still operate below breakeven, especially LFP wet-process plants which are significantly impacted by falling lithium prices. Currently, ternary wet-process profitability is slightly better than LFP, while crushing plant profits are marginally better than wet-process operations. However, crushing operations at some small and medium-sized plants also face sustained losses."
