SMM May 21: at the 2021 (sixth) China International Nickel-Cobalt-Lithium Summit Forum held by SMM Information & Technology Co., Ltd., Sun Jingwen, assistant director and analyst of Minmetals Securities Co., Ltd., introduced the current development situation of global lithium resources and looked forward to its prospect.
Present situation and Prospect of Global Lithium Resources Development
1. Composition of global lithium resources
The abundance of lithium is high in nature, but the resources with economic exploitation value are limited.
According to the relevant statistics, the lithium resources found at present have large lithium reserves in South America Lithium Triangle and Western Australia.
Lithium resources are mainly divided into salt lake lithium, ore lithium and clay lithium, accounting for 58%, 26% and 7%, respectively.
The following picture shows the current global representative salt lake and ore lithium extraction projects, the more well-known domestic Ganfeng lithium industry, Tibet mining and CITIC Guoan and so on.
two。 Hard rock lithium ore can efficiently respond to the rapid growth of global lithium demand.
Judging from the previous capacity expansion of hard rock lithium mine, hard rock lithium mine can efficiently respond to the rapid growth of global lithium demand, but its capacity growth is expected to slow in 2020-2022 compared with the previous strong expansion in 2017-2019.
3. The salt lake has remarkable advantages in resource scale and cost, and the technology is constantly improving.
With the increasing global demand for lithium in the future, Minmetals Securities forecasts the global capacity of extracting lithium from brine from 2009 to 2025. It is expected that the promise of capacity expansion by Chile and Argentina will be fulfilled in the future, and China's Qinghai will move from marginal to mainstream.
4. The development process of local high-quality lithium resources in China is accelerated.
Taking spodumene in western Sichuan and lepidolite in Jiangxi as examples, there are multiple opportunities for the methyl card ore field in Ganzi Prefecture and the Keryin ore field in Aba Prefecture, and it is expected that their development process will usher in rapid growth after 2020.
As for Jiangxi lithium mica, it has formed an effective supply, and its lithium extraction production of mica will be rapidly increased in the future.
Lithium extraction from Qinghai Salt Lake has the basis for large-scale capacity expansion.
In addition to the above two, lithium extraction from Qinghai Salt Lake also has the basis for large-scale capacity expansion.
Dongtai Gilnai Salt Lake area has a capacity distribution of 20,000 tons of lithium carbonate; Yili Ping Salt Lake area is rich in 10,000 tons of lithium carbonate capacity developed by Minmetals Salt Lake, in addition, Chaerhan Salt Lake, Lanke Lithium Industry has a production capacity of 10,000 tons of lithium carbonate, while Zangge Lithium Industry has a production capacity of 10,000 tons of Lithium Carbonate in this Salt Lake.
It should be noted that it is not difficult to see from the balance of supply and demand in the global lithium industry in recent years.
Nowadays, the supply of lithium resources is in a situation of substantial shortage, and the bargaining balance is tilted again from lithium salt to the mine end.
There is an urgent need to consolidate the guarantee of resources, and China's local "future white oil"-high-quality lithium resources are being strategically reassessed.
The production capacity of South American Salt Lake in 2022 will bring short-term relief (mainly under the decision-making of the last cycle), but it will still be tight in the long run.
In view of the determined demand growth and supply-side construction cycle, a reasonable price center is needed to stimulate global new resource projects and new technologies to accelerate the launch of the cycle.
The value and charm of Lithium Product Futures
CME and LME have launched lithium hydroxide futures contracts in May and June 2021; the birth of lithium product futures means that lithium has transformed from "industrial small metals" in the past to "white oil" in the future, and after lithium product futures are launched, the value discovery will be more sensitive, and commodity attributes will add financial attributes, which may profoundly change the lithium ecology in the long term, but the existing long-term price model and industrial supply relationship still need to be compatible with running-in.
Towards a more diversified global new energy vehicle supply system
Dimension 1: Europe, the United States and other global key new energy vehicle terminal markets are making efforts to build a local closed-loop supply chain.
Dimension 2: overseas resource providers reorganize and merge, accelerate the integration of lithium resources, and their target customers will be more diversified in the future.
The distribution of lithium compounds will be more diverse in the future.
However, a global division of labour based solely on efficiency priority will shift to a balance between supply security and fairness, which will raise the world's long-term price hub.
