According to SciDev board daily (Shanghai, researcher Zheng Yuanyuan), the development of new energy vehicles has gradually entered the deep-water area, and the installed capacity of power batteries is rising. At the same time, the industrial chain also focuses on the recycling of waste batteries. Car companies and battery factories have come to an end one after another, trying to dig gold in the "garbage". The war has burned all the way from battery manufacturing to recycling.

Business Korea reported today that LG energy solutions said it plans to sell waste batteries to recycling manufacturers and extract nickel and cobalt from them for the production of battery cathode materials; Sk innovation and Samsung SDI have also made relevant layout.

According to incomplete statistics of the science and Innovation Board daily, since July, enterprises at the head of the industrial chain have frequently acted in the link of waste batteries.

In addition, on July 7, the national development and Reform Commission and other departments issued a notice on the "14th five year plan" for the development of circular economy, which proposed that the production of new waste products such as power batteries increased significantly, making it difficult to recycle and disassemble them. The key projects and actions planned include the recycling of waste power batteries.

The market scale has reached one million, and the industry pattern is beginning to appear

In recent years, there has been an upsurge of electrification in the automobile industry, and the number of new energy vehicles has increased year by year. By the end of June this year, the number of new energy vehicles in China has reached 6.03 million. However, the subsequent problem is the recovery of power batteries.

According to national regulations, if the power battery capacity decays below 80% of the rated capacity, it will face retirement and forced recovery, and the power batteries equipped with the latest batch of new energy vehicles are in the retirement period. According to the data, the decommissioning of power batteries in China will reach 200000 tons (about 25gwh) in 2020. It is expected that the annual growth of decommissioned batteries will exceed one million after 2025.

In addition to the market scale, the value of raw materials is also a major reason for manufacturers' attention. Industry insiders pointed out that through battery recycling, manufacturers can obtain lithium, cobalt, nickel and other raw materials while avoiding the impact of price fluctuations《 According to the market scale and recycling technology of waste lithium ion batteries, taking ncm523 battery as an example, the metal contents of nickel, cobalt and manganese are 11.78%, 4.75% and 6.65% respectively, with high recycling value. Even for lithium iron phosphate batteries with the lowest precious metal content, the lithium element content of 1.6% is still higher than the raw ore with a grade of only 0.8-1.4% developed and utilized in China.

CICC's report on August 10 pointed out that battery recycling helps to alleviate the supply pressure of raw materials, conforms to the general policy of ecological and environmental protection, and is optimistic about the high prospect of the battery recycling market in the future; The strategic cooperation between battery enterprises and battery recycling is also expected to further strengthen the vertical and in-depth integration of the industrial chain.

From the perspective of market pattern, the Ministry of industry and information technology successively released the white list of comprehensive utilization of batteries in 2018 and 2021, with a total of 27 enterprises in two batches, and the industry pattern is beginning to appear. In addition to battery manufacturers such as BYD, Ningde times, GuoXuan high tech and vehicle manufacturers such as Weilai, which have arranged battery recycling,

Guanghua technology, as one of the first batch of five companies that meet the standard conditions, has strong advantages in the field of battery recycling;

In 2020, the company's power battery recycling volume doubled compared with 2019, realizing a revenue of 93 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 175.11%.