Soar 700%!

Affected by domestic epidemics, overseas inflation and other factors in 2022, short-term pressure on chemical demand, and short-term destocking pressure on domestic manufacturers; At the same time, the turmoil in the international situation has pushed up the high operation of bulk energy prices, causing certain pressure on the upstream cost side, and the chemical boom has shown obvious differentiation. In the past two years, the price of some products has soared by 700%, and the market space has continued to expand.

It soared 700% in two years, and raw material orders were scheduled for next year

Lithium hydroxide: snapped up by many downstream manufacturers

Under the tight market situation of supply and demand, lithium hydroxide has been snapped up by downstream manufacturers.

Yahua Group announced that Yahua Lithium (Ya'an), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, signed a supply contract for battery-grade lithium hydroxide with Askai New Energy (Shanghai), a subsidiary of SK. Ya'an Lithium ensures that from 2023 to 2025, it will provide more products to AIXKAI year by year, with a total supply of 20,000-30,000 tons.

Aixkai also signed the "Sales Contract (2023-2025)" with Tianhua Super Net Subsidiary Tianyi Lithium and Sichuan Tianhua, starting in 2023, Tianyi Lithium and Sichuan Tianhua will sell battery-grade lithium hydroxide products to AISHK, and the contract stipulates that the monthly shipment will be evenly delivered, and the annual shipment volume will not exceed the total amount agreed in the contract (within 10% of ±).

In addition to battery companies, car companies are also actively competing for lithium hydroxide. Mercedes-Benz announced an agreement with Canada-Germany Rock Tech Lithium to purchase an average of 10,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide from the latter each year, in a transaction size of 1.5 billion euros. GM signed a multi-year agreement with LG New Energy and Lithium Technologies company Livent to secure key raw materials for electric vehicle batteries. Among them, Livent will supply battery-grade lithium hydroxide to General Motors for 6 years starting in 2025.

From the perspective of market data, combined with the current development progress of upstream lithium resources, the construction of lithium salt processing enterprises and the expansion speed of new energy downstream enterprises, lithium hydroxide supply and demand are still in a tight balance, and are expected to continue to 2023.

PVDF: Prices have skyrocketed 7 times, and the supply gap is difficult to fill

As the downstream market continues to heat up, the gap between supply and demand of lithium battery PVDF continues to widen, superimposed on the production capacity of raw material R142b, the market supply is seriously insufficient, and the market price of lithium battery grade PVDF has climbed to 700,000 CNY/ton, nearly 7 times higher than the price at the beginning of 2021.

Due to the limited production capacity of PVDF for lithium batteries in China, and the ordinary PVDF production capacity cannot be converted into lithium battery grade PVDF in a short period of time, the construction of superimposed raw materials R142b is strictly controlled and the expansion is slow, resulting in the slow release of new production capacity of domestic lithium battery PVDF production capacity, and the supply gap is difficult to make up in the short term. With the further increase in new energy vehicle sales in the second half of the year, the lithium battery PVDF market is expected to maintain a high prosperity in 2022, supporting PVDF prices and boosting the annual performance of PVDF enterprises.

PVP: Some products are queued until January

Under the blow of geopolitical conflicts and energy crises, the production capacity of European chemical giants has declined, and domestic orders have surged, and a relevant person from a domestic PVP production enterprise said, "Now the company's PVP-related product order backlog is serious, and the delivery time of some products has been scheduled to January next year." ”

A PVP production enterprise related person said that the current European large factory's PVP production capacity has declined significantly, a large number of overseas orders began to divert to domestic enterprises, the company's PVP products have a backlog of almost 1,000 tons of orders, and the delivery of some products is scheduled to the end of the year or even January next year.