Global contention for lithium is "at daggish tension", and the trend is becoming more and more intense.







Industry giants, including lithium-ion batteries for power, materials, automobiles and industries, as well as financial capital, are stepping up their entry, seeking to lock up upstream minerals that are entering the pipeline of scarce supplies.







Three Chinese companies recently won the right to develop three lithium mines in Argentina at a total cost of 8.7 billion yuan.







Among them, Ningde Times has agreed to acquire Millennial to hold PastosGrandes for C $377 million (about 1.92 billion yuan).







Zijin mining won the TresQuebradas project with a total consideration of about 960 million Canadian dollars (4.96 billion yuan).







Ganfeng Lithium will own 100% of Mariana project after completing the acquisition of 8.58% equity of the project with 13.178 million US dollars (about 84 million YUAN), with a total transaction of 1.83 billion YUAN.







According to the incomplete statistics of GaIGong Lithium power, this year, there are 16 domestic and foreign projects to compete for and develop lithium mines, involving more than 44 billion yuan. Among them, there are 7 projects related to overseas mineral resources and 9 projects related to domestic lithium resources.







The battle for lithium ore has been imminent, an obvious situation is that the global company is deepening the global lithium ore layout, and China's company layout speed and scale performance is the most outstanding, is expected to dominate the lithium ore supply market in the future.







And a number of companies layout of the rhythm of lithium resources, further confirm that the supply of lithium in the face of shortage, through equity, acquisition, lock long order and other ways to deploy lithium resources is still the future market theme.







On the one hand, facing the TWh era, the effective supply chain will face a huge gap, battery companies need to prevent the risk of resource supply interruption in advance; On the other hand, the price of lithium electric materials is "soaring". Battery companies need to control the price fluctuation of supply chain and realize the cost control of core raw materials.







From a global perspective, China, Europe and the United States have proposed long-term carbon neutrality targets this year, and given a new energy vehicle penetration target. Among them, China proposes to achieve new energy vehicle penetration rate of 20% by 2025; Europe requires the realization of all-electric new energy vehicles by 2035, that is, 100% penetration; The United States also proposed to achieve 50% penetration of new energy vehicles by 2030.







According to GGII, global shipments of power and energy storage batteries will reach 1516GWh in 2025. According to the estimation that the processing output of 10,000 tons of lithium carbonate can meet the demand of 15GWh battery, the production demand of 1.01 million tons of lithium carbonate will be derived.







Compared with the huge market prospect, due to the decline of lithium prices in the past few years, many major mines suffered operating pressure last year, or production reduction, or production, resulting in the supply of global lithium resources are limited.







The whole lithium resource industry is in a state of imbalance between supply and demand, and the price continues to rise. In the future, with the widening gap between supply and demand, the market supply and price evolution situation will be more severe, which is also the reason why companies are fighting for lithium resources.







Controlling the mine means the company can hold the "throat" of lithium supply stability and cost control. From the current company dynamics, the following trends are important:







1. Chinese companies actively attack the overseas lithium market







As a big demand country, from the perspective of supply stability and cost control, it is very important for Chinese companies to go out and grab the discourse right of lithium cost.







At present, including Ningde Lithium, Ganfeng Lithium, Tianhua Super Clean, Zijin Mining, Xizang Everest and other Chinese companies have taken steps to acquire, there will be more companies involved in the global mineral resources battle in the future.







2. Strategically improve the status of lithium extraction from salt lake







At present, the global supply of lithium ore is dominated by spodumene lithium, and the supply representative country is Australia. However, as Australian lithium concentrates are sold by auction, it becomes more difficult for Chinese lithium salt companies to cooperate with them, and the cost management of lithium is out of control.







Among the proven lithium resources in the world, 58% are salt lake brine. The global representative lithium resources are distributed in the Lithium triangle of South America (Bolivia, Chile and Argentina), the western United States and Qinghai and Tibet of China. Salt lake lithium is high on hopes,







Since the beginning of this year, Ningde Times, Zijin Mining, Xizang Everest, Ganfeng Lithium (Mariana) participated in the overseas lithium mine acquisition are all salt Lake minerals.







Salt Lake lithium extraction is expected to become an important cornerstone of global lithium supply due to its advantages in resource scale, cash cost and increasing breakthroughs in lithium extraction technology.







3. Promote the development and utilization of local lithium resources







Facing the global carbon neutrality goal and the TWh era, the strategic importance of lithium resources has become a global consensus, and the competition is bound to become increasingly fierce in the future. It is of strategic significance for China to strengthen the development of lithium resources to ensure the supply security of lithium resources.







In terms of lithium extraction from salt lake, Ewei Lithium, Fulin Precision Industry, Ganfeng Lithium, Xizang Mining and Zangge Lithium have already extended their tentpoles to domestic salt lake resources, participating in mineral development and resource lock.







In terms of lithium extraction from mica, Ningde Times and Guoxuan High-tech have entered Yichun to further break through the technology of lithium extraction from mica, reduce costs and solve problems such as waste residue treatment from industrial chain connection to capital support, so that lithium mica will become an important supplement of lithium resource supply in the future.







China's lithium extraction technology and mass production scale have reached the inflection point of qualitative change, and will play an important role in the global lithium resource stage in the future.