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Source: cs.com.cn

The futures price of lithium carbonate, known as "white oil", continued to fluctuate and fall. On August 8, the main contract fell below the 80,000 yuan/ton mark, setting a new low since its listing.

Wind Financial data showed that as of 10:23 on August 8, the 2411 lithium carbonate futures contract was quoted at 79,550 yuan/ton, down 1.36%. The intraday low hit 79,200 yuan/ton, setting a new low since the contract was listed on November 15, 2023. Compared with the intraday high of 115,500 yuan/ton on May 8, the cumulative maximum decline during the period exceeded 31%.

Wenhua Finance

Chen Jing, a lithium carbonate researcher at Galaxy Futures, told China Securities Journal and CSI Taurus: "In the past three months, the domestic lithium carbonate market has had an average monthly surplus of more than 10,000 tons, and social inventory has continued to increase significantly, which has put strong pressure on prices."

Specifically, Chen Jing said that on the demand side, battery factories have fewer orders, and material factories rely on customer supply and long-term contracts to maintain rigid demand purchases. There is a strong wait-and-see sentiment. Some material factories with poor orders are even selling lithium carbonate inventory, resulting in weak spot acceptance capacity. On the supply side, this year's resource increment mainly comes from low-cost Australian mines, Brazilian mines, South American salt lakes and Chinese-funded mines in Africa, most of which are put into production and expanded as planned. Salt factories maintain production enthusiasm through cost reduction and efficiency improvement, modifying the mineral price settlement method to M+1 (that is, the mineral price is settled according to the monthly average price one month after loading/arrival), hedging, and processing on behalf of others. Domestic salt factories rely on the surge in spodumene imports and the peak season of salt lake production, and the operating rate continues to rise.

Yide Futures analyst Gu Jing also believes that the recent weakness in lithium carbonate prices is mainly due to supply and demand fundamentals. In August, the supply-side production schedule remained high, and the downstream positive electrode material schedule did not improve significantly month-on-month, while the return volume from South America was still high, and the surplus pattern continued. In addition, in terms of spot, after the price of lithium carbonate fell, downstream batteries maintained low inventory, had no enthusiasm for replenishment, and market sentiment was depressed. With the transmission of lithium salt prices to the mine side, lithium ore prices have fallen sharply. The current price has broken through the 90 US dollar percentile of the global mine integration cost, and it is necessary to pay attention to the actions of the mine side in the later stage.

Looking ahead, Chen Jing said that the pressure on lithium carbonate futures in recent months is difficult to ease, and the price will fluctuate to find a bottom. In the medium term, battery factories have good orders from August to October, and it is expected that the production of material factories will increase. At the same time, the output of lithium salts and Chilean imports in August both decreased slightly, and the surplus narrowed. It is not ruled out that low prices and periodic mismatches will bring a rebound. In the long term, under the expectation of surplus caused by increased production in mines, the bear market of lithium carbonate market has not yet ended.