Australia's Pilbara Mining Company today held its sixth spodumene concentrate auction this year. The final bid was US $6988 per tonne FOB. The last auction was on Aug. 2, with a hammer price of US $6350.

After taking into account exchange rate changes, prices actually rose 14.3 per cent month-on-month, according to the Cheung Kong metals team. The corresponding cost of lithium carbonate including tax is about 510000 yuan / ton. The concentrate is expected to be shipped from October 20 to November 20. Considering the reasonable logistics turnover time, the corresponding lithium salt is expected to be put on the market as early as January 2023.

As the price of lithium concentrate continues to rise, shares of Australia's Pilbara Mining Company (Pilbara Minerals Limited) have also risen and have recently been hitting record highs.

Lithium price keeps tight balance between supply and demand for a long time

Minsheng metal Qiu Zuxue team analyzed that with the large-scale production and consumption season of Q4 cathode materials, as well as the cost support of lithium concentrate, the short-term price will reach a new high. In the long run, supply and demand still maintain a tight balance, and mica and other low-grade lithium resources as a whole significantly raise the marginal cost curve to more than 15-200000, taking into account reasonable profits and return on investment to maintain the judgment of 25-300000 yuan in the long-term center of lithium price.

The market generally compares the 18-month manufacturing cycle to mining development, which is also the core of the market dispute over lithium price, but in fact, the existing greenfield mining projects are lower than expected to varying degrees. Lithium prices are high and profitability is expected to continue, the future is likely to usher in the cycle to growth switch.

The price of lithium concentrate remains high, and the advantages of integrated enterprises are obvious.

Yan Rong of Huaxi Securities believes thatAfter entering the second half of the year, the downstream new energy vehicle industry chain has a willingness to rush to work, which will increase lithium consumption and will support the subsequent lithium salt prices to continue to strengthen.2022Q4/2023Q1, lithium concentrate is expected to catch up with the rising trend when the price of lithium salt is expected to resume.

With the continuous rise of lithium concentrate prices and the sharp increase in lithium salt processing costs, the profits of the industrial chain have been greatly transferred to the upstream lithium ore resources. The rising costs caused by the rise of concentrates are bound to accelerate the profit differentiation between integrated enterprises and processing enterprises. Under the condition that the cost of integrated enterprises with guaranteed lithium ore resources in the upstream is controllable, the profit per ton of lithium salt will be significantly higher than that of pure lithium salt processors processed by underwriting Australian lithium concentrates, and the competitiveness of integrated enterprises is obvious.