Lithium aluminum foil is in short supply and sodium battery is about to start the contradiction between supply and demand may persist.

On September 17, at the China Automotive New Materials Application Summit Forum, Gao Jingzhong, general manager of North China Aluminum Co., Ltd., said that Ningde Times had been discussing a supply agreement with the company for the next few years since last year, and the company was required to make 3000 tons of aluminum foil a month. However, the production capacity is not yet available. It is planned to supply 156000 tons a year by 2025, when Ningde's total demand will be 450000 tons.

At present, battery-grade aluminum foil is used as the positive current collector of lithium battery. Ningde era recently frequently expand production, comprehensive a number of securities companies reported that its planned production capacity in 2025 is 500-600GWH, data show that 1GWh lithium battery aluminum foil in about 600-800tons, according to this standard, Ningde era only a lithium battery supplier, will consume 30-480000 tons of aluminum foil.

Sodium ion batteries have a greater demand for aluminum foil. At present, aluminum foil is used for positive current collector of lithium ion battery and copper foil for negative current collector. Because sodium ion will not form alloy with aluminum, both positive and negative current collector of sodium ion battery can use cheaper aluminum foil.

According to media reports on September 16, Meng Xiangfeng, assistant to the chairman of Ningde Times, revealed that a sodium ion battery production line will be put into production in Ningde era next year.

According to the arrangement of CCTV, nearly 30 enterprises at home and abroad have laid out the sodium ion battery technology, and a trillion-level market will be formed after industrialization.

Not only that, at the top design and policy level, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments said that they will take a series of measures to promote the healthy and orderly development of emerging batteries such as lithium-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries. On September 16, Vice Minister of Science and Technology Xiang Libin said that the Ministry of Science and Technology will take the development of power batteries as the main direction of scientific and technological support, and support scientific research projects such as the research and development of all-solid-state power batteries.

Over the past two months, the share prices of a number of aluminum foil concept stocks have risen to varying degrees. From July to today, A shares closed, Mingtai Aluminum, Huafeng Aluminum, Starfish shares, Dingsheng New Materials are all up more than 50% (see below, rounded).

However, battery-grade aluminum foil has the characteristics of long production cycle, high technical (equipment) barriers, fast iteration of new products, long certification cycle and so on. The battery-grade aluminum foil production capacity of the leading companies in the domestic aluminum industry is also very small.

Liu Xiaodong, a member of the aluminum foil expert committee of the Shanghai Nonferrous Metals Association, previously said that it is difficult to convert battery foil, such as packaging aluminum foil and air conditioning aluminum foil, and that aluminum foil is currently a seller's market, with limited new production capacity and tight supply and demand in the next three years. Conservatively estimated that aluminum foil prices still have 10% and 20% room to rise. Aluminum foil supplier Wanshun Xincai also said in the semi-annual report that there are unreasonable structure, medium and low-grade overcapacity and lack of high-quality products in China's existing aluminum foil products.

Among the domestic companies, the project under construction of Wanshun New material focuses on battery cathode aluminum foil, soft package battery aluminum foil and battery aluminum foil blank. Among them, the production project of 72000 tons of high-precision electronic aluminum foil under construction will form a production capacity of 155000 tons of aluminum foil after completion, and invest in a new project with an annual production capacity of 130000 tons of high-precision aluminum strip. Upon completion, it will increase the production capacity of 80, 000 tons of lithium battery positive aluminum foil billets and 50, 000 tons of double zero aluminum foil billets.

The battery aluminum foil production capacity of Dingsheng Xincai is expanding rapidly, and its 8000 ton power battery carbon coated aluminum foil project and 36000 ton battery project have been completed and put into production. 50, 000 tons of fund-raising projects are expected to be completed and put into production in 2022 (40, 000 tons of battery light foil production line and 10, 000 tons of battery coating foil production line).

Nanshan Aluminum is an important supplier of aluminum foil (positive collector) for (CATL) power battery in Ningde era. It has achieved batch supply of 12 μ m thick battery foil and is developing 10-9 μ m products.

Huafeng Aluminum said in a recent institutional survey that the main products of the 25000 tons of new energy battery material production line of the Chongqing project are automotive battery cathode foil and aluminum-plastic film with high added value. at present, aluminum-plastic film is gradually increasing, and battery positive foil material is still under verification and small batch trial production.