On February 9, MGL announced that the company plans to invest 929 million yuan to build an annual 30,000-ton lithium-ion battery cathode material project. The first phase will involve an investment of 737 million yuan, while the second phase will require 192 million yuan. The project is expected to achieve an annual production capacity of 5,000 tons of high-voltage lithium cobalt oxide, 10,000 tons of NCA material, and 15,000 tons of ultra-high nickel ternary material. The total construction period for the project is 36 months, divided into two phases: the first phase will take 21 months, and the second phase will take 15 months.

Last week's announcement of import and export restrictions in the Congo (DRC) has led to a continuous increase in cobalt sulfate prices. However, due to insufficient short-term demand support, the price increase has been relatively limited. Nickel sulfate prices have remained essentially stable, while lithium carbonate prices have shown a slight rebound and are fluctuating.

【100,000-ton LFP Project Nears Operational Launch】 The industrial park project will be implemented in two phases, featuring multiple advanced cathode material production lines, including: 100,000-ton lithium manganate (LMO) cathode material lines 40,000-ton ternary (NCM/NCA) cathode material lines 10,000-ton lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) cathode material lines A 100,000-ton LFP cathode material production line (soon to commence operations)

This week in wet process recycling: Recycled materials: Cobalt sulfate prices continued to decline this week, nickel salt prices remained stable, while lithium salt prices saw a minor rebound. Recovery rates for ternary and lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) black mass continued to fall, while lithium content in lithium iron phosphate (LFP) black mass remained temporarily steady. Taking ternary black mass as an example: Currently, due to the prolonged low price of lithium carbonate, the revenue contribution from lithium is lower than that from nickel sulfate and cobalt sulfate under these conditions. Therefore, most ternary wet-process enterprises now price the nickel-cobalt and lithium recovery rates in ternary black mass separately. For instance, the current recovery rate for nickel-cobalt in ternary electrode sheet black mass is 74-76%, while the lithium recovery rate is 71-74%.

【SMM Analysis】Recycling Industry Events This Week (Jun. 9-13): This week's recycling industry events.

[Canmax: Solid-State Battery Project Progressing Smoothly, Some Customers Have Achieved Sales After Evaluation] Canmax stated on an interactive platform that the company has developed new cathode materials, including high-voltage lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), high-nickel ternary materials, lithium-rich manganese-based materials, and spinel nickel-manganese materials, centered around the core requirements of "high specific energy, high safety, high C-rate, long cycle life, and low cost" for battery cell material systems. These products are suitable for applications in solid-state lithium batteries and semi-solid-state lithium batteries. The lithium-rich manganese-based and other cathode materials developed by the company have completed R&D trials and been sent to multiple solid-state battery customers for evaluation, demonstrating high specific capacity and good stability within customer systems. Among them, some customers have achieved sales after evaluation.