Abstract: The soaring price of Lun nickel has made the already overwhelmed new energy vehicle supply chain worse
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Text | Li yang
Edit | Shi Zhiliang
At the beginning of 2022, the new energy vehicle market continued its growth rate in 2021, and many institutions expected that China's new energy vehicle market will develop more than expected in 2022. However, this trend has been sniped at by raw material prices.
On March 8, the LME (London Metal Exchange) nickel plate quotation, which soared for two consecutive days, once again broke the historical record, breaking through the $100,000/ton mark, and the highest intraday rise of more than 103%. Under the sharp fluctuations, LME announced on the evening of March 8 that nickel trading will be suspended at least until March 11, and the resumption date will be 10% of the closing price on March 7 as a version of the rise and fall.
Nickel is a niche variety of the non-ferrous metal family, and its main use is stainless steel. However, with the development of new energy vehicles, nickel, as the key material of lithium-ion batteries, has become a precious metal material that has attracted much attention, and in ternary lithium batteries, the role of nickel is to provide higher energy density and greater storage capacity.
Data released by the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance shows that in 2021, China's power battery loading volume will total 154.5GWh, of which the ternary lithium battery load with nickel demand will be 74.3GWh.
Taking the most common 523 ternary lithium batteries (the ratio of nickel, cobalt and manganese in the battery cathode material is 5:2:3) as an example, each GWh ternary battery requires about 5000 tons of cathode material, of which nickel needs about 1519.5 tons.
It can be seen that nickel has become an indispensable metal element for the development of the new energy automobile industry. After the surge in Lun nickel, on March 7, the Ningde era (300750. SZ) plunged 7.5% on the day, with the collapse of the entire ternary battery sector. The rise in nickel prices has made the new energy automobile industry, which is already suffering from the rise in the price of raw materials in the supply chain, even worse.
However, in the long run, the supply of nickel is relatively stable, and the price is within the acceptable range. Xu Aidong, secretary general of the Cobalt Branch of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, told Caijingqiche that "this price increase is an unexpected event, there is no extreme situation, and nickel basically will not become a power battery card neck metal." ”
Nickel price sniper new energy vehicles
Lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium batteries are the two major technical directions of power batteries, of which ternary lithium batteries refer to ternary cathode material lithium batteries that use nickel cobalt manganese oxide or lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide. According to the different ratios of nickel, cobalt manganese or nickel, cobalt and aluminum, it can be roughly divided into 333, 532, 622, 811 and so on.
With the continuous improvement of the requirements of new energy vehicles for cruising range, high nickel ternary, especially 811 ternary lithium batteries, have become the recognized battery development direction due to higher energy density and lower cost. CICC Securities said in the research report that the high-nickel route represented by 811 has the characteristics of medium- and long-term performance improvement and cost reduction, and is the selection trend of global lithium battery leaders and international first-line car companies.
In the past few years, cobalt and lithium have successively become precious metals in the "card neck" of the power battery industry chain, but nickel has always been tepid and has always had a relatively stable supply.
This is mainly because the world's nickel resources are abundant, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) 2020 data, the global nickel resource reserves of about 89 million tons, of which about 60% are laterite nickel ore, about 40% are nickel sulfide ore. Nickel is found in about 3% of the earth, ranking fifth after iron, oxygen, silicon and magnesium.
However, the stability of nickel is being broken. On March 7, the LME nickel plate quotation rose from 29770 US dollars / ton to 55000 US dollars / ton, the largest intraday increase of more than 90%, exceeding the May 2007 intraday high of 51800 US dollars / ton, a record high.
On March 8, the price of Lun nickel continued to rise, breaking through the $100,000/ton mark, with a maximum intraday rise of more than 103%. So much so that LME announced in the evening that nickel trading will be suspended at least until March 11, and the resumption date will be 10% of the closing price on March 7 as a rise and fall board.
This round of nickel price increases was affected to some extent by the Russo-Ukrainian war. In 2021, Russia produced 115,000 tons of nickel, accounting for 11.52% of the total global production of 998,600 tons, most of which is supplied to China and Europe. On the other hand, in the past six years, Lun Nickel has been reducing its inventory until March 4, and the global inventory of electrolytic nickel is 81,300 tons. The inventory has fallen all the way from 500,000 tonnes in 2016 and is currently the lowest since the LME nickel went on the market in 2010.
The reverse development of supply and demand is the basis for this round of nickel prices, but the nickel price is out of control, and it is also related to the fact that Qingshan Holdings was forced to take a position by Glencore.
It is reported that Tsingshan Group holds an empty order of 200,000 nickel, and because Russian nickel is kicked out of the exchange and cannot be delivered, Tsingshan Group may not be able to deliver. According to the nickel price of $20,000 to $25,000 before the market started, the cost of holding positions was estimated, and the short order of 200,000 tons was between $5 billion and $7 billion.
It is unclear how much risk the rise in nickel prices poses to Aoyama's holdings. But if the rally continues, the company's short positions could offset some of its production profits. On the afternoon of March 8, Tsingshan Holdings replied to the media that it was preparing materials and would make a unified public response after that.
In Xu Aidong's view, "the nickel price increase is completely an emergency, mainly driven by funds and emotions, follow-up development mainly depends on the results of the consultation between the two sides, the price increase may continue for a period of time, and after the Indonesian nickel production increases, the price will gradually fall." ”
As an important raw material for lithium batteries, the soaring price of nickel has raised concerns that the new energy industry may be unable to withstand the pressure of high costs.
The new team of Tianfeng Securities and Electricity released a point of view that at present, lithium (which has exceeded 500,000 yuan / ton), nickel (ternary cathode), and aluminum (structural parts and components) related to electric vehicles are at a historical high. The recent abnormal surge in nickel prices has exacerbated the market's panic about the new energy vehicle sector.
Will China's new energy vehicles be necked by nickel cards?
Before the soaring price of nickel, China's new energy vehicles had been deeply affected by raw material prices.
Taking lithium carbonate as an example, the price at the beginning of 2021 was only 50,000 yuan / ton, and by December 2021, it has risen to 270,000 yuan / ton. According to the data released by Shanghai Steel Federation, the latest quotation of battery-grade lithium carbonate has exceeded 420,000 yuan / ton.
The price increase of raw materials has an immediate impact on new energy automobile enterprises. Dong Yudong, CEO of Great Wall Motor's Euler brand, said in an interview with Caijingqiche (ID: caijingqiche), "Now every Euler car sold will lose 10,000 yuan. ”
With the soaring price of nickel, the already overwhelmed supply chain of new energy vehicles has become even worse, and high-end models still have room for cost compression, but it is difficult for relatively affordable models to cope with the cost crisis. In the short term, the black swan of the rise in nickel prices can only be "hard to eat", but in the long run, nickel prices are actually difficult to become the neck metal of China's power battery card.
From the supply side, the global nickel resource reserves of about 89 million tons, is the fifth largest element after iron, oxygen, silicon, magnesium, long-term in a state of oversupply. China is the world's largest producer and consumer of nickel, with proven reserves of 2.8 million tons, accounting for about 53% of the world's total nickel consumption.
Indonesia, as the country with the richest reserves and high grade of nickel resources, has banned the export of nickel ore, but in the context of the policy, Grammy (002340.SZ), Huayou Cobalt (603799. SH), Zhongwei Co., Ltd. (300919.SZ) as the representative of the head precursor enterprises have gone to Indonesia to build factories, and cooperate with Tsingshan Group to break the Indonesian policy restrictions.
For example, Huayou Cobalt and Zhongwei Co., Ltd. signed a high-ice nickel supply agreement, agreeing that Qingshan Industry will supply 60,000 tons of high-ice nickel to Huayou Cobalt and 40,000 tons of high-ice nickel to Zhongwei within one year starting in October 2021.
At present, the first batch of NPI conversion of NPI to high ice nickel in Qingshan, Indonesia has been released, which means that the supply channel of nickel for new energy is opened, and a large amount of nickel pig iron in Indonesia can further supplement the nickel demand of new energy by converting high ice nickel.
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On the other hand, after Indonesia continued to implement the ban on nickel ore exports, Indonesia's nickel iron exports grew rapidly, and nickel iron made up for the supply of nickel resources. According to SMM data, Indonesia's nickel pig iron production in 2021 is expected to be 889,600 metal tons, an increase of 50% over 2020, and Indonesia's nickel pig iron production capacity will continue to be released in 2022, and Indonesia's nickel pig iron production is expected to continue to grow significantly.
This means that the shortage of nickel for new energy is expected to narrow significantly, according to the minsheng securities metal team, in 2023, the nickel supply and demand tension of the new energy vehicle line will be alleviated, the inventory will gradually recover, and the price will return to a reasonable range.
Xu Aidong also told Caijingqiche (ID: caijingqiche) that "this price increase is an unexpected event, there is no extreme situation, nickel basically will not become the power battery card neck metal, but if the main resource countries change in the future, it does not rule out the possibility of future card neck." ”