The demand for power batteries is continuously increasing. However, "China Automotive News" reporter learned that the battery industry raw material supply has not kept up with the pace of industrial development. Power battery raw materials copper foil, diaphragm imbalance between supply and demand, for a considerable period of time, the battery copper foil demand gap is large, but the battery diaphragm market has tended to saturate, but new production capacity is still expanding, next year may appear industry-wide losses.
Large shortage of copper foil materials for lithium batteries
In lithium batteries, copper foil is both the carrier of the negative active material, and the collection and transmission body of the negative electron flow, its importance is self-evident. In order to ensure the performance of power batteries, there are high requirements for the tensile strength, extensibility, denseness, surface roughness and thickness uniformity of battery copper foil. With high requirements, the production capacity is limited. Chen Yubi, vice president of Nordic Investment Co. said, "The rapid development of new energy vehicles has led to a sharp increase in demand for copper foil for lithium batteries and a large gap in copper foil production capacity."
It is reported that in 2015, the global supply of copper foil for lithium batteries was 90,000 tons and the demand was 91,000 tons, with a gap ratio of 1%; in 2016, the supply was 105,000 tons and the gap ratio expanded to 3%; in 2017, the supply is expected to be 110,000 tons and the gap ratio further expanded to 8%. In China, the growth of production and sales of new energy vehicles has driven the growth of copper foil production capacity, which was 59,000 tons in 2015, an increase of 19.1% over the previous year, but the increased production capacity still cannot meet the demand of the lithium battery industry. "During the '13th Five-Year Plan' period, the demand for porous-type, less-than-6-micron-thick lithium battery copper foil will further increase." Chen Yubi said.
The supply of copper foil for lithium batteries in 2018 was 146,000 tons and the demand was 161,000 tons, with a further widening gap, and the supply imbalance will ease after 2019, but there is still a 2% to 3% gap this year. In addition, the rise in copper prices coupled with the increase in demand for copper foil for power batteries has led to a relatively large increase in copper foil prices.
Diaphragm industry or full loss in 2018
In contrast to the oversupply of copper foil materials, the other raw material for lithium batteries, diaphragm, has been in greater supply than demand. In lithium batteries, the diaphragm is one of the key inner components, the requirements are also very high, both to resist corrosion of organic solvents, but also to maintain the permeability of the ions to smoothly traverse, but also to resist the high temperature generated by electrochemical. However, the diaphragm capacity is not limited by this, with the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the global battery diaphragm production line is rapidly expanding, there is already excess capacity situation.
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