[SMM Weekly Review] This Week in the Hydrometallurgy Recycling Market: LFP Black Mass Prices Began to Rise (2025.10.20-2025.10.23)

SMM October 23 News:

This week, prices of salt products such as cobalt sulphate and nickel sulphate continued to rise, while lithium carbonate prices also began to increase due to solid fundamentals including robust demand. As cobalt salt prices rose, the black mass payables for ternary and LCO saw a slight increase; however, the growth rate of cobalt prices slowed down, leading to a gradual slowdown in the rise of discount coefficients for cobalt and lithium. For LFP black mass, the price per % lithium rose this week alongside the increase in lithium chemical prices. Taking LFP pole piece black mass as an example, the current price is 2,700-2,900 yuan/mtu, up 75 yuan/mtu WoW. For ternary black mass, the nickel and cobalt payables currently stand at 74-76%, flat WoW, while the lithium payables are at 70-73%, up WoW. On the profit side, externally purchased LFP black mass for lithium carbonate production continued to incur losses, with profit margins ranging from -5% to -6%. Except for several newly commissioned LFP battery hydrometallurgy recycling plants this year, most LFP recycling enterprises have production lines that can process other raw materials to produce lithium carbonate. Therefore, even as lithium carbonate prices improved, many companies chose to halt purchases and production when facing losses. The situation is similar in the ternary hydrometallurgy sector, with profits hovering around 1-3%. In the LCO hydrometallurgy sector, as rising cobalt prices drove up cobalt payables for upstream and downstream recycling companies, profits have recently declined to around 1-3%. On the supply side, following the price increases of nickel, cobalt, and lithium, upstream recycling companies quickly raised prices for batteries and pole pieces, including LCO and LFP batteries, and black mass prices also increased to some extent. Most enterprises, facing losses, adopted a wait-and-see approach, with many LFP hydrometallurgy plants maintaining toll processing for Business clients.

SMM New Energy Research Team

Cong Wang 021-51666838

Rui Ma 021-51595780

Disheng Feng 021-51666714

Yanlin Lü 021-20707875

Zhicheng Zhou 021-51666711