Why high nickel system batteries or hidden worries?

Facts show that the rapid development of high-nickel batteries is driving the rapid growth of domestic nickel demand.

With the increasing price of cobalt, battery companies have to seek alternatives to cobalt under the urgent need to increase energy density. It has become an industry consensus to increase the amount of nickel used in batteries and reduce the amount of cobalt used. High-nickel ternary has gradually become a power battery. Development trend.

With the use of high nickel material, the unit cost of batteries decreased by more than 8 %, and the cost advantage was obvious. Since 2017, companies including Bic, BYD, Guoxuan Gaoke, Ningde Times, Shanshan Energy, Ningbo Jinhe, Tianjin Bamo, Dangsheng Technology, and Xiamen Tungsten have all begun to deploy high nickel products.

The 2017 battery material system is dominated by NCM325 and NCM622. The development of the 811 system by 2018 has exceeded expectations and is expected to become mainstream in the future.

Tesla, which led the 18650 battery boom, also said in the first quarter of 2018 that the batteries used by the Model3 increased the amount of nickel used and reduced the amount of cobalt used.

However, industry insiders have expressed concerns about the high nickel system to lithium-electric data reporters. Like cobalt, nickel is also a scarce resource. China's nickel is also mainly dependent on imports. There is no guarantee that nickel will not rise as frantically as cobalt.

The rapid development of high-nickel batteries is driving the rapid growth of domestic nickel demand. Data show that domestic imports of nickel ore and concentrates in March this year were 2.94 million tons, a 240 % increase from the same period last year. The use of nickel in monolithic batteries is rising at an average annual rate of more than 50 %, and a battle over nickel resources has quietly begun.

In order to obtain a stable supply of nickel, on August 30, 2017, Dangsheng Technology signed a five-year cooperation agreement with Australia's nickel cobalt mine supplier Scandium21. The two sides agreed that if Sheng Technology obtains a stake of not less than 25 % in the Systemon project in the future, it will obtain the same long-term off-take qualification as the mine life.

Similarly, LG Chemistry has long since begun its layout. On November 8, 2017, LG Chemical announced that it had invested 1 billion won(approximately US$ 897,000) in Korean nickel sulfate supplier Kemco and obtained 10 % of its shares.

Mining giants such as BHP Billiton, which are bullish on the prospect of explosive growth in new-energy vehicles, have turned to providing customers with high-purity battery-grade nickel.

Ouyangming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, made it clear: "Cobalt and nickel are strategic materials. The next goal-the positive pole of the high-energy battery is mainly non-cobalt nickel material. "

According to industry estimates, the domestic new energy car market will demand 200,000 tons of nickel in 2020, which may lead to a shortage of nickel supply. In this way, high-nickel batteries are not necessarily the best option, so there are also concerns about the development of high-nickel batteries.

On the one hand, our country is very short of nickel resources, the external dependence of nickel is more than 80 %. The domestic primary nickel mine procurement channels are single, mainly from the Philippines and Indonesia. Limited by the nickel supply structure and overseas dependence, the domestic nickel supply is very unstable factors.

In 2014, Indonesia banned the export of nickel ore, and the Philippines replaced it as the country's largest source of nickel ore, basically monopolizing our country's nickel mine import source. The closure of several Philippine nickel mines this year has reduced production, and the Indonesian government has begun to ease export restrictions.

According to reports, since mid-to-late April this year, U. S. sanctions on Russia nickel, nickel supply tightening expected to increase the impact of a sharp rise in nickel and Shanghai, a new three-year high. After the Russian nickel issued a normal position of production and operation activities, nickel price high shock disk consolidation, supply and demand tight balance pattern will make nickel price strong shock.

On the other hand, lithium batteries have extremely high quality requirements for nickel, which can meet the high purity nickel market supply of lithium ion batteries. Nickel is divided into two types, one is a low quality clay nickel mine, the output ratio of more than 70 %; One is the higher quality nickel sulfide mine, which accounts for less than 30 % of the output. The scarcity of high-purity nickel supply makes it difficult to meet the rapid growth of demand in the power battery market.

The world's nickel market could change dramatically in the next 10 years if the market share of electric vehicles exceeds 10 per cent, and copper and cobalt markets could be reshuffled, says Gelasenboge, CEO of Kannon, the world's largest commodities trader.

Will the development of high-nickel batteries drive "demon nickel" as crazy as "cobalt grandmother"?

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