TrendForce’s latest investigations reveal that the battery industry’s operating rate fell in November due to a significant cooling in end-user demand. Falling prices of key raw materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel led to a consistent downward trend in battery cell prices. In November, prices of Chinese EV battery cells dropped by approximately 3–4% MoM, consumer LCO cells decreased by 2.5%, and storage-type cells fell the hardest at 6.8%.
TrendForce reports that China’s EV battery market is undergoing a period of turbulence due to an overall lack of demand. Battery suppliers are reportedly reluctant to replenish their inventories and are instead, focusing on depleting existing stocks. This has resulted in insufficient demand to support the prices of upstream lithium materials, leading to a continuous decline in ASP.
In this press release, TrendForce details the major trends that are expected to take place across various segments in the tech industry in 2024, as follows:
Concurrently, based on TrendForce’s analysis, as N-type cell capacities incrementally come online, there might be a sporadic shortage of high-quality silicon materials and wafers tailored for N-type cells. This could further establish a noticeable price disparity between N-type silicon and wafers, and their P-type counterparts.
Australian mining company, Liontown Resources Ltd., has just announced it’s agreed to a buyout proposal of AUD 6.6 billion (USD 4.3 billion) by US lithium producer Albemarle Corp (ALB). TrendForce’s latest “2023 Global Li-Ion Battery Industry Chain Market Supply and Demand Report,” indicates that global lithium production in 2022 hit approximately 860,000 tons of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE). ALB, with its diverse lithium portfolio (spodumene, lithium salt, and tolling), accounted for over 180,000 tons of LCE. Predictions for 2023 spotlight a global lithium production reaching 1.21 million tons LCE, and ALB is set to churn out 200,000 tons of that, holding firmly onto the lead with its 17% market share.