Abstract
Lithium is widely used in the battery industry, ceramic industry, glass
industry, aluminum industry, lubricant, refrigeration, nuclear industry,
optical electric industry, etc newly emerged fields. In the field of lithium
application in 2006, the ratios of battery industry, lubricant and ceramic
industry amounted to 21.4%, 16.54% and 12.65% respectively. Meanwhile, as
lithium carbonate is the basic material to produce lithium salt and lithium,
lithium carbonate becomes the key in the lithium industry, and other
industrial lithium products are downstream products of lithium carbonate
generally.
Currently, the global lithium carbonate market capacity is 80-90 thousand
tons, and from the perspective of the inorganic salt annual report in Asia,
the global lithium carbonate demand amounted to 83.8 thousand tons in 2006,
and the supply was 85 thousand tons, so the supply and demand was balanced. It
is forecasted that the global lithium carbonate demand will exceed 90 thousand
tons in 2007, whose growth margin will reach about 8%; in addition, the global
lithium demand will increase at the pace of 5-7% in the following 3-5 years.
Although China has Salt Lake with high resource value, China achieved
technology breakthrough in 2004, which made China enter the global lithium
carbonate market. Presently, the lithium carbonate production capacity is only
33 thousand tons in China, and 45 thousand-ton production capacity will be
released from 2008 to 2010. As China is the main region of global lithium
carbonate production capacity release, it will influence much on the global
lithium carbonate supply layout.
At present, the main production capacity in the world mainly concentrates in
SQM, FMC and Chemetall, the accumulated market shares of which accounts to 73%.
Along with the continuous input of large-scaled lithium carbonate projects in
China, the demand and supply balance of lithium carbonate will worsen soon.
The global lithium carbonate surplus will amount to 13.2 thousand tons in
2007, and it will become worse in 2008. The supply will be much larger than
the demand, which will lead to rapid price drop.
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