2021-04-22
The Lithium Price Is Surging As The Lithium Ion Battery Demand Is Increasing
Lithium Ion Battery has been introduced and widely used in a variety of industries, especially for automotive and energy storage. The increasing demand in electric vehicles and energy storage sectors will drive the growth in Lithium-ion batteries. From the BNEF updated Lithium-ion battery demand outlook as below, We can see the total demand for the lithium market continues to grow.
According to SQM (Lithium miner Sociedad Quimica y Minera) forecast, the total lithium market demand reaches about 330,000 tons of LCE (lithium carbonate equivalent), a year-on-year increase of 6%. It is predicted the demand will continue until 2021, and the lithium demand will increase by 25% to over 410,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), reaching 900,000 to one million tons in 2025. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence also predicts that the total lithium demand is expected to increase to over 400,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE). Among them, the demand for Lithium Carbonate is increased by 23%, and the Lithium Hydroxide is increased by 33%, where the growth mainly comes from the demand of the battery industry.
Subjected to the effect of the epidemic, three mines in Australia were suspended, besides, some new projects are delayed and rarely put into operation. It is estimated that an additional 56,000 LCE (lithium carbonate equivalent) will be supplied from the salt lakes in Australia and South America in 2021. However, this production is far from meeting the market needs in 2021, the lithium industry will still maintain a tight supply.