Since the current price of lithium carbonate fell below 80,000 yuan simultaneously, the contradiction between supply and demand has further accumulated, and the lithium price has thus opened a new declining channel.
As of August 15, the main lithium carbonate contract LC2411 fell to 72,400 yuan/ton, and the recent month contract LC2409 fell to 71,650 yuan/ton. If the decline is sustained, the above contract prices will fall below 70,000 yuan on the last trading day of the week. Of the remaining 10 lithium carbonate futures contracts, 9 contracts except LC2508 closed below 80,000 yuan/ton.
These three groups of prices on the futures plate respectively represent the capital main force for the lithium price trend in the year, the market for spot prices, and the market for the far month lithium price forecast and judgment.
From the current market's understanding of the fundamentals, lithium prices not only have the possibility of falling below 70,000 yuan/ton in the short term, but may also be difficult to rise back to 80,000 yuan/ton in the next year. For downstream enterprises in the lithium industry chain, the decline in lithium prices means that product prices further lose cost support, and the more urgent task now is to find ideas to enhance the value of products.
In terms of spot, comprehensive data of different caliber, the average price of battery grade lithium carbonate on the same day was 75,000 yuan/ton, but there are also institutions to give the price of 72,000 yuan/ton, which has been very close to the latest price of the main contract. The daily drop of electric carbon spot remained between 1500 yuan/ton and 2100 yuan/ton, which showed an expanding trend compared with August 14.
From the point of view of the news, in addition to the supply side of the Lanke spot auction to 74,000 yuan/ton transaction, there is no large short-air disturbance. Lithium prices continue to fall and hit the 70,000 yuan mark, or the result of the accumulation of excess contradiction between supply and demand.
Previously, the market hoped that the terminal new energy and energy storage demand exceeded the expected development to boost lithium prices, but the structural bottleneck of revenue and profit growth has made the terminal Oems, downstream battery factories, midstream material factories, etc., for the lithium price rebound expectations and affordability "only reduce not increase". In this context, the question posed to the industry has changed from "when will the lithium price rebound" to "where will the lithium price fall", and the focus of observation has also changed from focusing on demand development to focusing on supply clearance.
First of all, in August, the market concentrated trading for lithium battery industry chain peak season inventory expectations, lithium prices fall will indicate that the peak season expectations gradually disappointed.
From the perspective of production scheduling alone, battery and material scheduling has reflected the "gold nine silver ten" peak season demand to a certain extent. However, the lithium carbonate customer supply ratio of more than 80%, superimposed with the lithium salt factory signed a long association, more than 30,000 tons of raw material inventory guarantee, the three mountains continue to inhibit the material factory replenishment demand, resulting in short-term demand is difficult to bring significant price rebound.
Secondly, with the increase in the degree of oversupply, the demand for the balance between supply and demand is also passively increased, and the effect of macroeconomic policies such as replacing old with new remains to be fermented, and there is still enough time for lithium prices to continue to fall.
The oversupply is playing out at both the lithium mine and the lithium salt end. The lithium mine as a whole is in the period of concentrated production capacity release, the new supply from the head miners, Africa and America is very obvious, and the impact of some mines to reduce production is more limited.
At the lithium salt end, the 70,000 yuan lithium price has begun to touch the cost line of integrated lithium salt plants such as Yongxing Materials, but it does not mean immediate and large-scale production capacity clearance. At present, the operating rate of domestic spodumene and lithium mica smelters exceeds 50% and 40%, respectively, and the operating rate of Salt lake lithium enterprises in the peak season is as high as about 80%. Lithium salt plants that have fallen into cost inversion also ease the pressure and delay the clearance by converting to replacement processing, or relying on the previous accumulation of cash, so the process of capacity adjustment is very long.
Looking back at the historical cycle, the scale clearance from the lithium mine end will be the first domino that the contradiction between supply and demand begins to ease. At present, the overall cost of Australian mines is 40,000-60,000 yuan/ton LCE, and the 70,000 yuan lithium price test is only a high-cost mine. Where the latest lithium price support falls in the short term is still waiting for the signal from the lithium mine end.
