As the world's largest production base of lithium batteries and the second largest producer and exporter of lithium-ion batteries, China's demand for separators is increasing.
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On December 20, at the 2014 Lithium Battery Separator Localization Seminar, Wu Hui, General Manager of CCID Consulting Investment Division, believed that since 2014, with the continuous technological breakthroughs of domestic separator companies, the localization of separators has become the entire lithium battery industry. An important trend in the industry, but the reality is that domestic diaphragms basically rely on price wars to occupy the low-end market, and the production capacity of domestic low-end diaphragms is severely surplus.
Industry data show that in 2013, the market capacity of China's domestic diaphragm was 538 million square meters, an increase of 40.40% year-on-year, and the market size reached 5.032 billion yuan, an increase of 20.52% year-on-year. However, due to the relatively high technical barriers of diaphragms, most of the domestic diaphragm market needs to be imported, especially high-end diaphragms basically rely on imports. Therefore, only from the output of domestic diaphragms, the output of domestic diaphragms in 2013 was only 296 million square meters, which is about 50% of the domestic diaphragm market capacity.
Separator is also a material with high technical content and added value in lithium-ion batteries, and its cost accounts for 20%-25% of the battery. Currently, Japanese and American companies use technical barriers to form an oligopoly market. The top four companies in the industry monopolize about 75%. Market share.
"From the perspective of the market development trend from 2014 to 2015, in the reality of increasing demand for power batteries, the market development of diaphragms will also increase rapidly. China will focus solely on quantity and take the low-end route of price wars. Now it is gradually moving towards the high-end." Sun Dongquan, deputy secretary general of the China Plastics Processing Industry Association, analyzed.
At the beginning of December, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology publicly solicited opinions on the "Lithium-ion Battery Industry Standards and Conditions". The draft said that it is necessary to strictly control new lithium-ion battery industry projects that simply expand production capacity and have low technical levels. Enterprises should meet the following scale requirements: annual battery production capacity not less than 100 million watt-hours; annual production capacity of cathode materials not less than 2,000 tons; annual production capacity of anode materials not less than 2,000 tons; annual production capacity of separators not less than 20 million square meters; electrolysis The annual production capacity of liquid is not less than 2,000 tons, and the production capacity of electrolyte is not less than 500 tons.
Liu Jiaxin, secretary-general of the China Battery Industry Association, believes that the introduction of this opinion shows that the Chinese government has improved the level of the entire lithium battery manufacturing industry from the perspective of market access, and promoted the increase in the industry concentration of the entire industry.
Mo Ke, the chief analyst of Truth Research, analyzed on the forum and pointed out that among the four key materials of lithium-ion batteries, the diaphragm material is currently the only one that has not yet fully realized import substitution. This is the case in the field of consumer small-scale lithium-ion batteries. This is especially true in the field of high-power lithium-ion batteries for automobiles.
In this context, Wuhan Huiqiang New Energy Material Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Wuhan Huiqiang") independently developed the diaphragm project to promote the domestic production of domestic diaphragms, especially high-end diaphragms, thereby effectively reducing the cost of power batteries.
On December 20, Wuhan Huiqiang's annual production line for lithium battery diaphragms with an annual output of 100 million square meters (50 million square meters in the first phase) was put into operation. According to reports, this is another major investment project in Wuhan after the first dry process production line with an annual output of 10 million square meters was established in Henan Province in October 2010. Wuhan Huiqiang New Energy has invested 500 million yuan in the first phase, has a modern plant of 130,000 square meters and a research and development center of 20,000 square meters. The main production lines are all imported equipment from abroad, and the annual production of high-end diaphragms is 50 million square meters.
Wuhan Huiqiang Chairman Wang Hongbing introduced that the diaphragm project established by Huiqiang Group in Wuhan Huangpi is a major layout of Huiqiang Group's transformation from traditional plastic packaging to environmentally friendly new materials.
"This not only fills the gaps in the lithium-ion battery separator industry and high-end separators in Hubei Province, but also breaks the monopoly of foreign giants, reverses the passiveness of downstream lithium battery companies in using high-end separators that they cannot produce according to user needs, and better guarantees battery quality. . We will use three to five years to reach an industrial scale with an annual sales volume of more than 2 billion yuan." Wang Hongbing said.