Around 2016, the mainland's new energy automobile industry gradually entered a good situation, and lithium iron phosphate batteries represented by BYD and ternary lithium batteries represented by the Ningde era were put into the market in large quantities. At that time, some people expressed concern that according to the theoretical life of power batteries, the current batch of power batteries will enter the retirement period at the end of 2021, when a large number of discarded lithium batteries will cause a huge burden on the mainland resource recovery system, is it possible to cause secondary pollution of the environment? As it turns out, this worry is overly worrying.
Entering 2022, the first batch of power batteries put into the market ushered in their own "retirement wave". However, unlike the aging of the population, the power batteries that are collectively decommissioned have their "old age dividend" industry - the power battery recycling industry.
First, why did the decommissioned power battery become a "fragrant food"?
As we all know, the price of waste recycling is always one place lower than the original price of the item, but this rule does not apply in the field of power battery recycling. According to industry insiders, the recovery of decommissioned power batteries not only does not shrink in price, but sometimes the discount coefficient will even exceed 100%.
The discount coefficient is the most important variable in calculating the transaction price, and the price of the transaction between the two parties is derived by multiplying the original price of the item and the discount coefficient. The level of the discount coefficient reflects the psychological expectations of buyers and sellers about the value of the goods. The discount coefficient is more than 100%, which means that in the eyes of everyone, the current decommissioned battery is more valuable than the new battery.
Generally speaking, the capacity of the decommissioned power battery is less than 80% of the factory, which cannot guarantee the driving demand of electric vehicles, so why is there a situation where the discount coefficient is inverted? Two reasons.
1, the price of battery raw materials has risen sharply
There are two kinds of mainstream new energy power batteries, the first is ternary lithium batteries, followed by lithium iron phosphate batteries. Among them, ternary lithium batteries are the most widely used in the field of new energy passenger vehicles, and lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide is the cathode material, so the demand for rare metals is extremely high. However, without exception, the above raw materials are all in the stage of price inflation.
According to statistics, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has soared from 51,000 yuan / ton in January 2020 to 356,000 yuan / ton now, up nearly 7 times in two years. The modern industrial system is intertwined and involves the whole body. The price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has soared like an arrow, and the price of other power battery raw materials has also risen.
Since October 2021, in the past three months, the price of cobalt has risen from 400,000 yuan / ton to 503,000 yuan / ton, compared with the price of nickel has not doubled, but it has also risen from 150,000 yuan per ton to 179,000 yuan.
Therefore, the price of raw materials that is often doubled makes the second-hand price of power batteries higher than the ex-factory price.
2. The new energy automobile industry has a strong momentum
The hot demand for decommissioned power batteries stems from the soaring price of battery raw materials, and behind the tight supply and demand of battery raw materials is the rapid expansion of the new energy automobile industry.
According to statistics, from 2016 to 2021, China's new energy vehicle sales rose from 336,000 units to 3.521 million units, and the scale of production and sales expanded by more than 10 times. According to this estimate, the China Automobile Association estimates that China's new energy vehicle sales will exceed the 5 million mark in 2022, achieving a year-on-year growth rate of 47%.
At the same time, the number of decommissioned batteries is also rising rapidly. South Korean investigation agency SNE combined with The historical decommissioning data of China's power batteries speculated that by 2025, the scale of China's power battery retirement will reach 90GWh (gigawatt hours), which is equivalent to 36 billion yuan according to the existing power battery price benchmark.
According to the 2% of the most conservative raw materials up rate, by 2030, China's power battery recycling scale will exceed 100 billion yuan. Obviously, this is an attractive market that no business can ignore.
Second, Chinese and foreign new energy giants, wrestling battery recycling yard
Good development expectations have attracted a large number of new energy enterprises to participate in it. Grammy, which has been deeply involved in the recycling of electronic products for many years, naturally occupies the leading position of power battery recycling. The battery research and development and manufacturing leaders BYD and Ningde times have also laid out their layouts and want to occupy a place in this new blue ocean market.
Grimme power battery recycling is taking the "global cooperation" route. While making extensive layouts in China, Grimme will also extend its tentacles overseas and establish battery recycling bases in Indonesia and Europe. Through the in-depth cooperation between the upstream and downstream of the industry, Grimme strives to achieve the goal of a total of 250,000 tons of power battery recycling by 2025.
In October 2021, CATL spent 32 billion yuan to build a battery material recycling industrial park to build a production base serving the two major decommissioned battery utilization methods of "echelon application and material recycling". BYD's battery recycling business is laid out earlier than the Ningde era. Up to now, BYD has set up more than 40 power battery recycling outlets in China, and has accumulated rich experience in large-scale operation in three aspects: fine dismantling, material extraction and recycling, and activation and comprehensive utilization.
In the pattern of one super and two strong, there are countless new players. Such as Samsung SDI, LG Energy, Tesla, Guoxuan Hi-Tech and so on. However, the real "industry hegemons" are not the above industrial giants.
Third, bad money pressure good money? What led to the recycling chaos of power batteries
There are two main ways to recycle decommissioned power batteries: one is ladder utilization; the other is material recycling.
The cascade utilization is mainly for batteries with a capacity attenuation of less than 20%, and because the performance attenuation is not serious, it can also be applied to communication base stations with low power efficiency requirements, low-speed electric vehicles and other fields. Batteries with a capacity attenuated to less than 60% are left with only the path of material recycling. However, this is a problem: how to evaluate the power battery of various brands, and what is its true capacity and attenuation ratio?
It is more difficult to solve this problem, because the technical information and technical parameters of various battery manufacturers are confidential, which creates natural convenience for the "wild small factories" that bloom everywhere.
In 2021, the number of power battery recycling enterprises registered is as high as 26,000, of which less than 50 enterprises have been recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and have "industry specification conditions for the comprehensive utilization of waste power batteries". Those companies that fail to meet the standards, do not do business? Of course not, people are doing it well!
Since it is not up to standard, it is simply how to come with it. The cost of identification that has been saved is all invested in the recycling of the battery. This makes many small factories more generous than many large companies when recycling batteries, which in turn leads to upstream companies that collect waste batteries are more willing to find small factories to sell batteries instead of large factories. In other words, strict testing standards have become a disadvantage for formal enterprises.
According to statistics, in 2021, about 200,000 tons of batteries will be decommissioned, and the battery capacity recovered by regular enterprises will be less than 50,000 tons. Most of the decommissioned batteries are "flowing" into the massive recycling "small workshop".
IV. Conclusion
Nowadays, the waste automobile power battery industry is becoming a blue ocean market with no monopoly. Because the battery evaluation standards are not uniform, the parameters are not transparent, the industry information is asymmetrical, and the profits are high, the market has to a certain extent appeared that informal companies are better than regular companies.
In order to completely reverse the phenomenon of "bad currency expelling good money" in the power battery recycling industry, the policy mandatory restriction of licensed operations is on the one hand, and it is also necessary to strengthen the cooperation of major battery manufacturers in technology and realize battery data sharing as soon as possible. Fundamentally, let the power battery recycling market be more transparent and more standardized, so that the entire 100 billion-level market will be formalized.