The production line has become a money printing machine? The production of this lithium electric material is expanding crazily.

Over the past year, the lithium industry has two very obvious characteristics, one is the "rise" of upstream material prices, and the other is the "expansion" of battery production capacity.

Lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, electrolyte, lithium iron phosphate, electrolytic cobalt, lithium hexafluorophosphate. All go up crazily. Ningde era, BYD, Yiwei LiNeng, China New Airlines, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Funeng Technology, Honeycomb Energy, Xinwanda …. All go crazy to expand production.

In such a situation, the material manufacturers should be the ones who benefit most and are most excited by the whole industry chain. Our own products are in short supply, orders keep coming like snowflakes, prices soar all the way, and performance rises all the way.

Although the price increase of lithium copper foil is not particularly outstanding, the performance is also considerable. The net profit of Jiayuan Technology is expected to grow by 184.25% Rue 224% in 2021; the net profit of Copper Crown Copper foil is expected to grow by 387.26% in 2021; although Node has not yet announced its results, many institutions predict that the company's average net profit in 2021 will increase by more than 9000% compared with the same period last year.

As a result, these material manufacturers are counting a lot of money, while wantonly expanding production, in their eyes, "the production line has become a money printing machine."

Tens of billions of projects occur frequently.

Recently, copper foil manufacturers have made great efforts to expand production. On January 20th, Nanchang Economic Development District signed a contract with Huayou Group Hua Innovation Materials Co., Ltd. with an annual output of 100000 tons of lithium copper foil. On January 16, Nord shares announced that it plans to invest in the construction of a new production base of 100000 tons of copper foil materials in Huangshi City, Hubei Province, with a registered capital of 3.5 billion yuan.

According to the understanding of battery China, Nord shares has a total production capacity of about 43000 tons / year of electrolytic copper foil. With the completion of the technical transformation of its Qinghai electronic material production line, and the completion and commissioning of 15000 tons / year of Qinghai Node Phase II and 12000 tons / year production capacity of Huizhou Electronics Phase III, the total production capacity of Nuode Copper foil will reach 70, 000 tons / year.

Two months ago, Jiayuan Technology planned to increase 5.6 billion yuan into the project with an annual output of 16000 tons of high-performance copper foil in Meizhou, Guangdong, 15000 tons of high-performance copper foil in Ningde, and 20, 000 tons of electrolytic copper foil in Jiangxi Jiayuan. And Shandong Jiayuan annual output of 30, 000 tons of high-precision ultra-thin electronic copper foil project and so on. In addition, the company also signed an agreement with Ningde Times to jointly set up a joint venture company to build a high-performance electrolytic copper foil project with an annual output of 100000 tons.

In fact, the expansion of copper foil production was very hot as early as the first half of last year. In May 2021, for example, there were as many as four copper foil enterprises in one month. Hainan Zijing copper foil project with an annual output of 50, 000 tons has been settled in Qujing, Yunnan; Tongling non-ferrous metal has an annual production capacity of 20, 000 tons of ultra-thin electronic copper foil for high-precision energy storage; Longdian Huaxin has a total investment of 10 billion yuan, with an annual output of 6-8 μ m lithium copper foil Nanjing project has laid the foundation; LG Chemistry announced that it will invest about 230 million yuan in China's Defu Technology to expand production capacity.

Copper foil thinning and thickening profit

According to industry estimates, taking into account the limited production of important upstream producers and the overall expansion progress of the industry, the jump in capacity of lithium copper foil will occur in 2023, which will lead to a shift in the competitive factors of the industry from equipment and capital bottlenecks in the past: customer channels, supply chain management and product continuous iteration capabilities.

Lithium copper foil has become one of the first choices of negative current collector for lithium-ion battery because of its good conductivity, good mechanical properties, soft texture and outstanding cost advantage. Technically speaking, the thickness of lithium copper foil has a significant impact on the negative electrode manufacturing process and battery performance, and the use of lighter lithium copper foil is the future trend.

"the smaller the thickness of the lithium copper foil, the advantage is that, on the one hand, the lighter the weight of the battery and the lower the resistance, the battery performance will be further improved; on the other hand, it reduces the quality of the copper foil on the battery. it will also reduce the raw material cost of copper foil and increase the energy density." Industry insiders analyzed.

At present, the trend of light and thin lithium copper foil is obvious, with the increase of the permeability of ultra-thin copper foil products below 6 μ m, the market will have a supply gap, while the copper foil market for lithium batteries above 6 μ m may have overcapacity. At present, 6 μ m copper foil has gradually become the mainstream variety, and 4.5 μ m copper foil is also gradually increasing.

According to the research and analysis data of Bank of China Securities, at present, the production capacity of 6 μ m copper foil is mainly concentrated in China. It is estimated that in 2022, the effective production capacity of 6 μ m copper foil is about 90, 000 tons, and the gap between supply and demand is 16300 tons.

On the market side, Ningde era began the switching of 6 μ m copper foil as early as a few years ago, and now it has achieved more than 90% permeability; at the same time, many domestic mainstream battery manufacturers, such as BYD, Yiwei LiNeng, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Lishen Battery, and so on, have already actively introduced 6 μ m copper foil, and the permeability of domestic 6 μ m copper foil is expected to be further improved.

As for 4.5 μ m copper foil, the industry believes that 2020 is the first year of 4.5 μ m copper foil, with an output of 4745 tons that year, accounting for about 3%. Among them, the output of Jiayuan Technology and Norde Co., Ltd. is more than 1000 tons, which is in the leading level in China. Other companies to achieve 4.5 μ m copper foil production in 2020 include Longdian Huaxin, Shengda Electric, Huawei Copper foil, Tongling Huachuang, Fujian Qingjing and so on.

It is understood that copper crown copper foil has achieved large-scale production of 6 μ m double-sided lithium battery copper foil in 2018, and has mastered the core manufacturing technology of 4.5 μ m extremely thin lithium battery copper foil and high tensile lithium battery copper foil and has small-scale production capacity. Its commercial use is in an orderly process.

According to institutional statistics, the gross profit margin of 4.5 μ m extremely thin copper foil is close to 50%, 6 μ m is about 30%, and 8 μ m is about 20%. In the case of no significant difference in cost, the technology premium of ultra-thin copper foil directly increases manufacturers' profits. With the smooth progress of the light and thin copper foil process, the penetration of 6 μ m and 4.5 μ m copper foil is accelerated. It is expected that the proportion of copper foil used by downstream battery factories will further increase, and the performance of copper foil manufacturers with technical strength will also continue to rise.