Reform Energy & MCC Wuye Partner on Ningxia Green Hydrogen Project

This week, China's second-life application market operated steadily overall, but prices of some categories edged down slightly, with limited overall fluctuation. Market transactions were dominated by just-in-time procurement. The cost side exerted consistent downward pressure: this week, prices of nickel, cobalt, and lithium chemicals all pulled back, with lithium carbonate showing the most pronounced downward movement. Although there was a time lag in the transmission of raw material costs to the second-life battery cell segment, the simultaneous weakening of all raw material categories still directly pressured market price expectations. The divergence in category trends became more pronounced: ternary second-life battery cells, originally dragged down by persistently mediocre end-use demand in the downstream EV sector, had long faced expectations of price declines in the market. Coupled with the loosening of price support due to the cost-side decline, these dual factors jointly drove a slight pullback in ternary second-life battery cell prices this week. In contrast, LFP second-life battery cells found strong support from stable and improving demand in the ESS sector. Even though raw material costs pulled back simultaneously, prices remained stable and did not follow the downward trend.

On June 24, Cangzhou Mingzhu Plastic Co., Ltd. announced that its lithium-ion battery separator production expansion project has been fully completed. This commissioning involves the remaining production lines of the "annual 200 million square meter wet-process lithium-ion battery separator project" and the "annual 500 million square meter dry-process lithium-ion battery separator project." According to the announcement, the second production line (with an annual design capacity of 100 million square meters) under the wet-process project, which is being handled by the subsidiary Wuhu Mingzhu Separator Technology Co., Ltd., has recently commenced production. Concurrently, the remaining three production lines (with a combined annual design capacity of 300 million square meters) under the dry-process project, being handled by the subsidiary Cangzhou Mingzhu Lithium Battery Separator Co., Ltd., have also been completed and put into operation.