Lithium-ion battery industry development trend

In September, the spatial distribution of China's lithium-ion battery industry was carefully scrutinized, and at the same time, the spatial development trends of China's lithium-ion battery industry were analyzed.

*** believes that lithium-ion batteries as the key cross-industry in the three major industries of new energy, new materials and new energy vehicles are the heart of new energy vehicles and will be the biggest beneficiaries of the development of new energy vehicles. Regional competition is prompting many local governments to deploy high-end lithium-ion battery industry. At the same time, the lithium-ion battery industry is also showing a trend of industrial transfer and convergence.

Actively develop lithium ion battery industry in multiple places

The distribution of China's lithium-ion battery industry in 2010 shows that China's lithium-ion battery industry is mainly concentrated in the Pearl River Delta represented by the Guangdong region, the Yangtze River Delta represented by Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region represented by the Beijing-Tianjin region. . The regions with rich lithium resources, such as Jiangxi Yichun, Sichuan Aba, Qinghai, and Tibet, have unique conditions for the development of the lithium-ion battery industry. They have put forward the development ideas for their own lithium-ion battery industry.

The Pearl River Delta region is an important lithium-ion battery material and assembly production base in China. In 2010, the output value of lithium-ion battery industry in the region exceeded 9.67 billion yuan, accounting for about 35% of the country's total. Numerous low-cost labor forces in the region have led to the rapid development of the assembly of batteries, which is represented by labor-intensive, and forms a lithium-ion battery production base represented by BAK.

The Yangtze River Delta region, which includes Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, is the most concentrated area for lithium-ion battery industry in China and plays an important role in the domestic lithium-ion battery industry. In 2010, the scale of the lithium-ion battery industry in the region was 7.48 billion yuan, accounting for about 27% of the country. Among them, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are important production bases for lithium-ion battery materials, and Jiangsu has gathered a large number of foreign-invested enterprises. Shanghai relying on its strong automotive industry, lithium-ion power battery industry has achieved rapid development, coupled with Shanghai's scientific research and technological advantages, its lithium-ion power battery industry will receive priority development.

The Bohai Bay area in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, and Shandong provinces is China's lithium-ion battery materials and lithium-ion battery industry base. In 2010, the lithium-ion battery industry in the region reached 4.56 billion yuan. Among them, relying on its advantages in technology and human resources, the Beijing region has made considerable progress in the field of lithium ion battery cathode materials. In the field of lithium-ion power batteries, it has successfully provided clean lithium-ion power batteries for Beijing Olympic buses. The Tianjin region has basically formed a complete lithium-ion battery industry chain. Its cost advantage over Beijing has led to a large number of companies choosing to settle in Tianjin.

The western and central regions represented by Jiangxi Yichun, Sichuan Aba, Qinghai, and Tibet rely on the advantages of local lithium resources to develop the lithium-ion battery industry.

One of the largest lithium-bearing lithium production bases in China, Yichun, Jiangxi Province has a lithium oxide reserve of 1.1 million tons, accounting for 31% of the country's total, and 12% of the world's total, ranking first in the world in terms of lithium ore.

Industrial transfer and integration are increasingly evident

In 2010, China's lithium-ion battery output accounted for more than 30% of the world, and showed a trend of increasing year by year. At the same time, due to the higher barriers to high-end lithium-ion battery materials, the eastern dominant regions will maintain industrial agglomeration.

The intellectually intensive eastern regions represented by Beijing, Jiangsu, and Shanghai will continue to maintain their monopoly on high-end battery materials on the basis of existing technology leadership. With the increase in performance requirements for power batteries for new energy vehicles, the advantages in the eastern region will become even more pronounced.

From the perspective of the regional distribution of China's lithium-ion battery industry, the Pearl River Delta region represented by Shenzhen and Dongguan brought together a large number of lithium-ion battery manufacturers in China. However, with the gradual reduction of labor costs in the Mainland, the assembly of batteries and the labor of packs, etc. Intensive links will gradually shift from the coast to the mainland. With the gradual implementation of the national strategy for new energy vehicles, the central and western cities that have resource advantages such as Jiangxi Yichun, Jiangxi Xinyu, Sichuan Aba, Qinghai, and Tibet have begun to increase investment in the lithium-ion battery industry, “Lithium Asia” and “ "Lithium Valley in Asia" laid a foundation for building a 100 billion lithium battery industry. Overall, China's central and western regions have a unique resource advantage in the upstream lithium mining sector.

At the same time, lithium-ion power batteries have become an upgrade direction, and industries have converged into traditional automotive cities. The development direction of lithium-ion batteries lies in automotive power batteries. Therefore, all parties in the lithium-ion battery-related industry chain adopt joint ventures and cooperation to jointly develop the lithium-ion power battery industry. One of the most typical models is the “automobile manufacturer lithium-ion battery manufacturer” and “auto parts manufacturer lithium-ion battery manufacturer” two modes, its advantages in addition to the dispersion of risk, it is more important to integrate the upstream and downstream industry chain advantages, Reduce transaction costs and create synergies. Therefore, China's lithium-ion battery manufacturers have cooperated with downstream automotive manufacturers to present a lithium-ion power battery industry to the traditional automotive industrial cities. Beijing, Shanghai, Hefei, and Guangdong will be the cities that will be the key cities for the future lithium-ion battery industry. .

The investment value of each link in the industry chain is highlighted

*** Proposed that with the rapid development of the lithium-ion battery industry and the expansion of downstream production capacity, the trend of greater demand growth than supply growth will make the investment value of the upstream mineral resources sector prominent. At the same time, it is difficult for SMEs in general to cut into them. Enterprises in the industry should expand production capacity through various means such as listing, mergers and acquisitions, and the introduction of strategic investors.

Cathode materials, separators, and electrolytes are the most valuable part of the entire lithium-ion battery industry chain. ***Think that the positive role of cathode materials in improving the performance of lithium-ion batteries makes them at the core of the industry chain, and the large market capacity is enough to make it a hot spot for future venture capital investment; currently domestic diaphragm manufacturers Less, the high-quality diaphragm used for power battery grade basically relies on imports. In the future, this field will become the industry's investment hot spot with the development of power car batteries; lithium hexafluorophosphate, the key raw material in the electrolyte, has been dependent on imports due to its high-tech content. Its technical bottlenecks and high profit margins make it possible for companies entering the field to enjoy the added value of high profits due to technical barriers in the early stages of growth.

Because the production process and technology of the battery assembly are relatively mature, most of the domestic lithium-ion battery manufacturers can produce lithium-ion battery cells under the condition that the supply of raw materials can be guaranteed. Compared with other upstream battery material industries, this is a labor-intensive process, and there are many companies involved in this field at home and abroad.

The assembly of batteries is capital and scale. The characteristics of winning by scale make it very difficult for start-up companies to enter this field. In contrast, traditional battery manufacturers will have a larger first-mover advantage and scale advantage. In addition, large-scale lithium-ion battery manufacturers in the industry should actively cooperate with downstream automakers to form integration between the upstream and downstream industrial chains, exert synergies, and achieve win-win results with automotive manufacturers.

With the increasing production and sales of lithium-ion batteries, scrapped lithium-ion batteries are prone to serious environmental pollution. In addition, lithium-ion batteries contain more metal elements, of which cobalt is a rare precious metal. The content of various kinds of ore is very low, resources are scarce, and its recycling will have enormous economic value. With the continuous development of battery recycling technology, especially the application of microbial metallurgy technology in lithium-ion battery processing, various materials in lithium-ion batteries such as cobalt, graphite, electrolyte and other metal materials will also highlight the recovery value.

*** also pointed out that in terms of the current market, fewer companies focused on the recycling of lithium-ion batteries, mainly because of the complex process of recycling lithium-ion batteries. Higher barriers to entry have resulted in fewer companies in the field, and most of them have not been able to deal with waste in depth, and this link has undoubtedly had extremely high investment value.