It is projected that China's spot lithium carbonate price will stay on the downtrend in the near term on oversupply, which is expected to extend over the mid-to-long term, per Mysteel estimation.
Source: Mysteel
China's lithium carbonate supply is estimated at 86,800 tonnes in July, against an anticipated total demand of 71,000 tonnes among downstream cathode active material factories based on the available production scheduling, leading to a potential oversupply of 15,700 tonnes through the month.
On the news front, it is heard that a salt lake project in Qinghai Province will sell around 2,000 tonnes lithium carbonate, with a discount of 5% benchmarking a third party price reporting agency's average price during July 12-19.
In addition, Liontown, an Australian lithium mining company, announced a spodumene concentrate offtake agreement with Sinomine, indicating that the mine is about to officially commence production very soon. In addition, there are also new lithium hard rock projects under development in Africa and Europe, potentially lifting the total supply in the future.
More importantly, it is widely believed that the lithium carbonate prices are yet to bottom, and the downstream demand will not revive significantly unless the spot prices drop to around Yuan 80,000-85,000/tonne, according to Mysteel survey with lithium ore producers and traders.
Written by Aggie Hu, huchenying@mysteel.com
Edited by Navy Liu, liuchuanjun@mysteel.com