With the new energy vehicle track becoming more and more popular, the demand for power batteries is rising, and the problem of battery supply shortage is becoming more and more serious. The power battery recycling business came into being.
Last year, China ushered in the peak period of decommissioning the first batch of power batteries. At that time, the reporter of shell finance found that the China Shipbuilding Industry Group Power Co.Ltd(600482) battery recycling market was mixed. There were problems such as unclear pricing mechanism, the highest price, “black workshop” in power, and nearly 80% of them flowed into the black market, resulting in the failure of the regular army to receive batteries. It was difficult to form a virtuous circle.
At the two sessions this year, power battery recycling has once again become a key topic for many members of the CPPCC National Committee and deputies to the National People’s Congress.
Dong Mingzhu, deputy to the National People’s Congress Gree Electric Appliances Inc.Of Zhuhai(000651) chairman and President, suggested standardizing the lithium battery recycling market to avoid large-scale influx of low-quality waste lithium batteries into the market. Clarify the subject of law enforcement, improve the comprehensive law enforcement mechanism, and ensure the safety of the whole process of power battery from delivery, use to recycling.
Wang Qi, deputy to the National People’s Congress and chairman of Qiyang (Chengdu) Investment Management Co., Ltd., suggested further standardizing the management mechanism of power battery recycling of new energy vehicles.
Yin Tongyue, deputy to the National People’s Congress and chairman of Chery Automobile, proposed to promote the integration of new energy vehicles into carbon trading management and bring power battery raw materials into strategic reserves.
How to standardize the power battery recycling market? Wang Yao, Assistant Secretary General of China Automobile Industry Association and Minister of Technology Department, said in an interview with the shell finance reporter of Beijing news that first, it is necessary to promote recycling legislation, clarify the main responsibilities of all parties, and strengthen the punishment of “black workshops”; Second, improve industry access, continue to implement the “white list” management, and encourage and support enterprises with strong recycling capacity to carry out recycling in an orderly manner.
discount coefficient upside down , pricing by degree
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The recovery price of power battery mainly depends on the content of valuable metals such as nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium in the battery. Generally speaking, it should be recovered at a discount according to the market price of nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium. However, at present, there has been an obvious inversion of discount coefficient in power battery recycling.
Li Peng (a pseudonym), a power battery recycler, said that the price of power battery recycling this year is very high, and there are obvious differences in prices in different regions. The lowest discount coefficient (the ratio of waste price to new goods price) of some batteries was about 60% last year, which generally rose to more than 100% this year, and the highest discount coefficient can reach 120%, all in the state of increasing prices.
Gem Co.Ltd(002340) said that metal prices have risen recently, and the price of battery recycling will rise accordingly. The impact of rising raw material costs will be reduced by appropriately increasing the selling price of recycled battery recycling products.
In fact, at present, there is no clear pricing mechanism for China Shipbuilding Industry Group Power Co.Ltd(600482) battery recycling, and there is a phenomenon that batteries are recycled by bidding in the informal market. The price given by small workshops is higher and the cost is lower, and more batteries flow to the informal military market. Unlike last year, the “black market” of power battery recycling is generally priced by tonnage. This year, it is more priced by degree. “Pricing by ton is relatively cheaper.” Power battery recycler Liu Ze (pseudonym) said.
When consulting a number of power battery recycling companies and recycling vendors, the shell finance reporter of the Beijing News found that recycling by degrees is the main way of power battery recycling at present. The general price of 1 degree (i.e. 1 KWH) is 160350 yuan, which needs to be judged by the state of the battery. Li Lin (a pseudonym), a recycling vendor, said, “if the battery is recycled according to the degree, it first depends on whether the battery has a drum package. In the case of no drum package, the fuzzy quotation of once electricity is 240350 yuan.” He further said that the recycling quotation needs to evaluate the service life of the battery, the kilometers of the vehicle, the state and attenuation degree of the battery.
Another battery recycler Tang Sheng (pseudonym) said, “if the battery state is not particularly good, the battery quotation is about 200 yuan per kilowatt hour (1 KWH), but the capacity of the battery also needs to be tested. If the state is good, the price must be better.” He explained that if the namesector of a car’s battery is 60kwh, if it is calculated according to 200 yuan / kWh, the price of a car’s battery pack is 12000 yuan.
Tang Sheng said that if it is divided into several types according to tons, one is recyclable and the other is waste disassembly. If it is recycled according to pure waste, the price of pure batteries is about 1223. If it is with a shell, it may be thousands of yuan; But he also stressed the need to detect the capacity and attenuation of the battery. If the battery is in good condition, it is generally recycled according to the degree.
In the consultation, the reporter found that power battery recyclers did not care about the location of the source of goods, said they could pick up the goods at their own expense all over the country, and said that if the volume of goods was large, they could further cooperate. Not only that, when the reporter searched on the second-hand commodity trading platform and other network platforms with new energy power batteries and waste automobile batteries as keywords, he could find that posts about the recycling of new energy automobile power batteries could be found everywhere, mostly indicating a large number of acquisitions, heavy purchase, door-to-door recycling all over the country, etc.
waste power battery available echelon utilization
the cost of recycling itself has not changed much , nickel, cobalt and lithium and other metal prices have increased . bring ” good harvest ”
During the reporter’s consultation, a recycler sent a video of loading recycled batteries at 11 p.m. on March 4, and said that he often had to work overtime at night. What attracts recyclers is the high profit behind recycling.
Moke, founder of the real lithium Research Institute, told the shell finance reporter, “under the condition of low resource prices, the main purpose of recycling waste power batteries is echelon utilization; under the condition of high resource prices, processing into resources and raw materials can also make profits, and more recycling enterprises will recycle battery disassembly and processing raw materials.
”At present, in the context of the continuous rise in the price of raw materials for power batteries, for power battery recyclers, recycling waste batteries is more to disassemble and get the raw materials.
It is reported that Ni MH batteries contain 35% nickel, 4% cobalt, 1% manganese and 8% rare earth elements; Lithium iron phosphate batteries contain 1% lithium, while ternary batteries contain 12% nickel, 5% cobalt, 7% manganese and 1% lithium. The prices of metal materials in these batteries have increased significantly since 2021, especially battery grade lithium carbonate and electrolytic cobalt.
\u3000\u3000 “At present, the recovery price of power batteries has soared, mainly due to the recent sharp rise in the price of upstream raw materials. The price of lithium carbonate materials has reached 500000 yuan, up nearly 70% from the beginning of January. The prices of cobalt and nickel have also increased significantly at the same time. Battery recycling enterprises can make profits by directly treating the retired batteries and selling the precious metal materials, which leads to the decline of retired batteries High demand. ” “In addition, due to the imperfect recycling system of retired batteries, the small amount of recycling through formal channels, the imbalance between market supply and demand, and the high expectation of the continuous rise of material prices in the future, recycling enterprises are willing to pay a high price for retired batteries,” Wang Yao said
“The cost of power battery recycling itself has not changed much, and with the rise of metal prices such as nickel, cobalt and lithium, it means that the recycling industry may have a better harvest, which is also the main reason for the increase of attention in the power battery industry,” Merco said
The rise of power battery recycling price is also related to the supply and demand structure of the industry itself; At present, the batteries that really enter the scrap stage are still the first batch of batteries when new energy vehicles first entered the market. The quantity is not so large. The total supply of waste lithium batteries is less than half of the recycling capacity, and there is a huge supply gap in the market. At the same time, the price of superimposed metal raw materials continues to rise, and the market’s scramble for supply is more incandescent.
Due to the continuous rise of raw material prices, there has been a hoarding phenomenon stimulated by high profits. In this regard, Liu Ze, the above recycler, said, “now they are recycling at high prices. They want to double their profits through the dividend of rising raw material prices, but they are also worried. They don’t know whether the price of metal will rise all the time. Once the price falls, it will bring losses.” In the view of the industry, on the one hand, hoarding will lead to bad competition in the market, on the other hand, if the price falls, it will lead to the collapse of the industry.
Wang Yao said, “at present, there are recycling enterprises with a certain stock situation, which has a certain risk for enterprises. Upstream materials such as lithium have sufficient reserves in the world, but the construction cycle of mining projects is long. With the gradual release of new production capacity, the subsequent tension between supply and demand will be effectively alleviated.” He added, “In addition, the sharp rise in material prices this round is irrational, which does not rule out the speculation of enterprises hoarding goods. At present, according to the calculation of public material quotation, the battery cost has exceeded the acceptance expectation of the downstream market, and the government departments have attached great importance to it. It is believed that under the adjustment of all parties, it is more difficult for the material prices to continue to rise sharply, which is difficult for the recycling enterprises with high price At a certain loss risk. “
sudden increase of track players
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High profits have led to a sudden increase in track players, showing a growth of hundreds of times in the past 10 years. According to public data, the first batch of electric vehicles were officially put on the market in 2011. In the same year, the number of registered enterprises related to battery recycling exceeded 200 for the first time. Ten years later, the number soared to 24000 in 2021.
Tian yongqiu, an analyst in the automotive industry, said, “the main reason for the explosive growth in the registration of battery recycling related enterprises in 2021 is that the industry generally believes that the first batch of electric vehicle batteries in the market are entering the retirement period and the market prospect is clear. In addition, the supporting industries related to power batteries are also gradually landing.”
Despite the surge in the registration of enterprises related to battery recycling, there are few “regular forces” in the power battery recycling market, and small workshops still account for the majority.
The emergence of small workshops can be traced back to the early stage of the promotion of new energy vehicles. At that time, the manufacturing technology of power batteries was very immature and the yield was low, which gave birth to a number of small workshops to recycle the waste electrode materials of the battery cell factory. With the improvement of power battery technology, recyclers begin to collect waste batteries. Those with high residual capacity and good detection indicators are sold at the price of echelon utilization, and those with poor manual disassembly are sold to downstream smelting enterprises to extract the positive material precursor, so as to obtain income.
In 2018, 2020 and 2021, the Ministry of industry and information technology successively issued three batches of enterprise list announcements of industry standard conditions for comprehensive utilization of waste power batteries of new energy vehicles, and the “regular army” of power battery recycling was also born one after another. Up to now, there are only 45 enterprises on the white list of the Ministry of industry and information technology.
However, the birth of the “regular army” has not completely changed the current situation of the power battery recycling market. According to public data, in 2018, about 74000 tons of power batteries were decommissioned, and the total recycling capacity of the five white list enterprises in that year was 5000 tons, which means that more than 90% of the decommissioned batteries went to the “black market”. By 2020, according to the data of China Automotive Technology Research Center, in 2020, the number of Shanxi Guoxin Energy Corporation Limited(600617) vehicles has reached 4.92 million, and 200000 tons (about 25gwh) of power batteries have been decommissioned. However, industry data show that the total recovery of white list enterprises is less than 50000 tons, and most decommissioned power batteries still flow into small workshops.
In July 2021, Geely, Weima, Tianneng, Chaowei, Zhejiang Narada Power Source Co.Ltd(300068) and other nine new energy vehicle and battery manufacturers issued a joint statement, saying that the auction of waste power batteries must restrict the bidding enterprises to be listed on the “white list” and prevent middlemen and small workshop enterprises from participating in the bidding. At the same time, they also called on all Shanxi Guoxin Energy Corporation Limited(600617) automobile and power battery manufacturers to abide by it, Standardize the flow channels of waste power batteries.
However, because the price of the “regular army” is lower than that in the informal market, and the current power battery recycling market presents the state of the highest price, it is still difficult to grab the battery from the small workshops that dare to pay high prices despite all the efforts of the “regular army”.
“The ‘black workshop’ has lower operating costs than the regular army, and it is often easier to get the battery by using the price advantage. However, due to the informal treatment process and low technical level, the ‘black workshop’ is more prone to safety accidents and pollution problems during treatment, which is also very unfavorable to the industry’s traceability management of the battery.” Wang Yao said, “for the recycling industry, the existence of ‘black workshop’ seriously disrupts the market order. Regular enterprises cannot get batteries, so it is difficult to form a production scale, and the rapid development of the recycling industry is out of the question.”
For the “regular army”, it also faces technical bottlenecks in battery pretreatment technologies such as automatic disassembly, crushing and sorting, intelligent dissociation technology and so on.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.Limited(300750) also said that key technologies and equipment such as efficient extraction of valuable metals need to be upgraded, and the pollution prevention level of waste power battery disassembly and treatment needs to be improved; At the same time, at present, the power battery is still a non-standard product, and the recovery and disassembly cost is large, so it is difficult to realize the mechanization of the whole process.
Similarly, profitability is also a big problem. Zhang Tianren, chairman of Tianneng group, once said that the value of materials extracted from a ton of lithium iron phosphate waste battery by an ordinary recycling enterprise is 8110 yuan, but the recycling cost is as high as 8540 yuan. Such enterprises often need government subsidies, and the final income is not even as high as selling scrap iron.
19 only concept shares outbreak
2025 annual waste or more than one million tons, the capital market is moved by the wind
China Automotive Technology Research Center predicts that the capacity of waste power batteries to be recycled in China is expected to reach 137.4gwh in 2025, more than five times that in 2020 Gem Co.Ltd(002340) deputy general manager and Secretary of the board of directors Ouyang Mingzhi once said that by 2025, the scrapped amount of China Shipbuilding Industry Group Power Co.Ltd(600482) batteries will exceed 1 million tons, and the power battery recycling industry will become the next tuyere industry.
The service life of new energy vehicles is 4-6 years, and the power battery is the heart of new energy vehicles. Assuming that the service life of power batteries is 5 years, it is speculated that 252000 tons of power batteries will be retired in 2021, and the number will increase to 2373 million tons in 2030, corresponding to a market space of 107.43 billion yuan.
The profit seeking nature of capital will not give up this blue ocean. Recently, Ningbo Ronbay New Energy Technology Co.Ltd(688005) announced to join hands with Gem Co.Ltd(002340) to invest 18% equity of Wuhan power battery regeneration technology Co., Ltd. held by Gem Co.Ltd(002340) through equity participation. The two sides will cooperate in power battery recycling, overseas nickel resource smelting, precursor product supply and marketing and other fields.
In addition, Mianyang Fulin Precision Co.Ltd(300432) also said that it plans to build projects with an annual output of 200000 tons of new high-voltage solid lithium iron phosphate cathode materials, including lithium battery recycling and reuse. Last year, Gotion High-Tech Co.Ltd(002074) , Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.Limited(300750) also successively announced to invest in industrial chain projects excluding the recycling of waste battery materials.
The concept stocks related to power battery recycling in the A-share market also showed a rising trend. The data showed that the power battery recycling sector index peaked at 913.79 on March 1, and several stocks rose; As of the closing on March 9, the data showed that the power battery recycling sector index closed at 819.22, with 19 stocks, of which Guangdong Dcenti Auto-Parts Stock Limited Company(603335) rose 10.03%, Miracle Automation Engineering Co.Ltd(002009) rose 4.22%, Zhejiang Narada Power Source Co.Ltd(300068) rose 3.39%, and Zhejiang Fuchunjiang Environmental Thermoelectric Co.Ltd(002479) rose 0.89%.
It is necessary to formulate special policies and suggestions on the development of energy-saving and recycling of batteries through legislation, so as to speed up the development of energy-saving enterprises and improve the management of energy-saving and recycling industries. The second is to speed up the revision of relevant standards. It is urgent to encourage the field to try first in the form of group standards. Third, strengthen industrial cooperation, give play to the role of industry associations, alliances and other industry platforms, promote information sharing among enterprises in the industrial chain, cooperate to jointly build retired battery recycling channels, jointly promote the development of residual value detection technology, automatic disassembly technology and related equipment, and explore and practice new business models such as vehicle electricity separation.
