Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: the price of lithium carbonate is expected to drop to 350000-400000 yuan per ton in the second half of this year.

CTOnews.com, February 17 (Xinhua)-- Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice president of the China Electric vehicle Association, said today that domestic lithium-ion battery shipments this year are about 1 billion kilowatt-hours, and the growth rate will drop sharply. The reason is that the growth rate of new energy vehicles is lower, and the demand for power batteries is lower for vehicles with lower charge, such as plug-in and mixing.

Ouyang Minggao said that this will ease the demand pressure on lithium-ion batteries in the market, and the price of lithium carbonate is expected to fall to 350000 to 400,000 yuan / ton in the second half of this year. In order to ensure the development of the battery recycling industry, the more reasonable balanced price range is 300000 to 400,000 yuan / ton.

The average price of domestic lithium carbonate in 2022 is about 480000 yuan / ton, which is nearly 3 times higher than that in 2021. However, CTOnews.com learned that the price of lithium carbonate showed a downward trend before and after the Spring Festival. Data released by Shanghai Iron and Steel Federation on February 16 showed that the average spot price of battery-grade lithium carbonate was 445500 yuan per ton, a cumulative decline of more than 5 per cent since the Spring Festival. Other lithium materials, such as industrial-grade lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, etc., have declined.