Three factors drive lithium carbonate to 100,000 yuan/ton in 2021

As of March 25, the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate was 87,000 yuan/ton, an increase of 117% from the bottom of July last year of 40,000 yuan/ton, while the increase of lithium hydroxide and lithium concentrate did not exceed 40 %. Data predicts that in 2021, the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate is 85,000 yuan/ton, an increase of 93.09% year-on-year, and the average price of battery-grade lithium hydroxide is 75,100 yuan/ton, an increase of 36.34% year-on-year; the high price of lithium carbonate is expected to rush to 9.5 At around RMB 10,000/ton, the growth rate of lithium hydroxide may be slower than that of lithium carbonate, but the high price is also expected to reach around RMB 88,000/ton. If the short-term price is considered, battery-grade lithium carbonate may break the 100,000 yuan/ton mark. The driving factors supporting the domestic lithium salt price to continue to rise are: First, the lithium concentrate supply pattern is highly concentrated, the superimposed global salt lake discharge progress is slower than expected, and domestic lithium salt plants have rigid demand for raw materials; in view of the salt lake expansion cycle In the longer term, the important increase in lithium resources in the next 2-3 years will come from lithium concentrates in Western Australia, and the current domestic lithium salt factories also rely heavily on imported Australian ore as raw materials. At the end of last year, Pilbara acquired the Altura Lithium Mine in Australia. At present, the only miners in Western Australia that independently sell ore are Galaxy Resources and Pilbara. The concentration of supply at the mine terminal has been further improved, and the control of the right to speak has been strengthened. Second, from the downstream to the terminal, full production and full sales, raw material stocking continues to strengthen; the current rise in lithium salt prices is more driven by strong downstream demand, especially the demand for iron and lithium. The prosperity of new energy vehicles is unabated. Small power, energy storage, and consumer products also constitute a significant increase in demand. Head material companies have full production and strong iron-lithium production and sales. The Advanced Industrial Research Institute of Lithium Battery (GGII) predicts that domestic shipments of lithium iron phosphate batteries are expected to exceed 90 GWh in 2021, and the production of LFP materials will be more characterized by 'bulk chemicals'. Lithium iron materials will be in the iron-lithium ion battery market. The technical threshold is lowered, the market scale is expanded, the application scenarios are more abundant, the product models will gradually be unified, and the company's productivity and production scale will be further improved. The third is that the output of leading resource providers and lithium salt factories will be released in an orderly manner. According to industry analysis, the supply and demand of the industry in 2021 will largely depend on the release progress of the world's leading salt lake lithium extraction manufacturers SQM and Albemarle's new production. Among them, SQM plans to increase the lithium carbonate production of its Chilean salt lakes from the current 70,000 tons/year to 120,000 tons/year by the end of this year. Albemarle’s Chilean LaNegra lithium carbonate plant has a total output of 40,000 tons/year in the third and fourth phases. It will be completed in the middle of 2021, customer sample delivery will be launched in the second half of 2021, and commercial production will begin in 2022. From a short-term perspective, after entering the second half of the year, the cost pressure from the downstream battery to the final vehicle link may restrict the upstream raw materials to further increase, superimpose the destocking of low-priced lithium concentrate, and continue to rise in the price of lithium, then the lithium salt link The profit of the company may be narrowed, and more profit will be transferred to upstream resource providers. From a long-term perspective, the development of the global new energy automobile industry has entered a positive self-circulation. As a rigid demand for power lithium batteries, the total global lithium demand from 2021-2025 may rise from 440,000 tons of LCE to about 1 million tons of LCE. The lithium industry will face continuous and larger annual demand increments, and the development of global second- and third-tier sub-optimal resources will be put on the agenda. Based on this, the global lithium salt supply and demand pattern will also become more diversified: First, supporting OEMs in key end markets such as Europe and the United States are building batteries, materials, and even refining and resource output, or will reduce the supply of lithium in the Asia-Pacific region. The dependence of the system; the second is that the domestic lithium salt factories previously imported Australian ore, and the source of concentrate raw materials was relatively simple. In the future, the value of domestic salt lakes and ore resources will be re-evaluated, such as the main salt lakes in Qinghai (Chaerhan, East and West Taiwan). , Yiliping), and high-quality spodumene ore (such as methyl card, etc.) in western Sichuan will form a supplement.