21st Century Business Herald reporter Dong Peng Chengdu report
On May 9, a list of Tesla suppliers circulated in the industry. After investigation, the above list comes from the 2021 Impact report on Tesla's official website. Tesla has also released similar reports in previous years.
However, compared with the 2020 report, Tesla disclosed the company's complete supplier list of nickel, cobalt and lithium raw materials for the first time, based on the disclosure of suppliers such as Huayou Cobalt Industry.
Among them, lithium products mainly come from the United States Yabao Company (ALB), Livent Company (Livent), as well as China's Ganfeng Lithium Industry and Yahua Group.
cobalt and nickel suppliers include Guizhou Zhongwei Company, Hunan Zhongwei Company and Huayou Cobalt Industry.
Tesla said that by purchasing directly from mining companies, Tesla can directly participate in the local market without relying on multiple midstream companies, which are usually located between electric car manufacturers and mining industries, which makes the supply chain more transparent and traceable, as well as better environmental and economic benefits.
According to the above report, in 2021, Tesla directly purchased more than 95% of lithium hydroxide , more than 50% of cobalt and more than 30% of nickel for nickel-containing (NCA and NCM) batteries from 9 mining and chemical companies.
Before this, Ganfeng Lithium and Yahua Group reached cooperation with Tesla.
In November 2021, Ganfeng Lithium announced that the company and its wholly-owned subsidiary Ganfeng International signed a "Product Supply Contract" with Tesla. It is agreed that from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2024, the company and Ganfeng International will supply battery-grade lithium hydroxide products to Tesla. The actual purchase quantity and sales amount shall be subject to the purchase order issued by Tesla.
As for Yahua Group, Tesla plans to purchase battery-grade lithium hydroxide products worth a total of US$630 million to US$880 million from Yahua Group's wholly-owned subsidiary Yahua Group from 2021 to 2025.
According to this newspaper's report in late April, the execution amount of the battery-grade lithium hydroxide contract between Yahua Group and Tesla was still small last year. The part that has been fulfilled in 2021 was only 24.9131 million yuan (about 3.9 million US dollars), and the performance amount was only 1%.
Although Ganfeng Lithium Industry and Yahua Group have established a relatively certain long-term and stable lithium resource supply guarantee system by signing long-term contracts and investing shares.
However, in the above report of Tesla's above-mentioned classification of four major lithium salt suppliers, ALB and Livent companies are listed as "Integrated Mine Site + Refiner" (integrated minerals + smelting), while Ganfeng Lithium and Yahua Group are Refiner (smelting) companies.
However, judging from Tesla's overall lithium raw material supply system, China has become an irreplaceable supplier worldwide.
In addition to the two listed companies listed above in A-share , ALB and Livent have both layouts in the country.
ALB announced last year that it would acquire Guangxi Tianyuan New Energy Materials and build lithium hydroxide production capacity in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu and Meishan, Sichuan. This is the main part of the company's determined capacity expansion plan; Livent Company also has branches in Jiangsu.
"Although we recognize that battery recycling will play a key role in the supply part, thereby achieving a closed-loop supply chain. However, global battery production will continue to rely heavily on primary battery mining materials to meet the growing demand in the short and medium term," Tesla pointed out in the report.
For ternary batteries such as NCA and NCM, Tesla expects that the company's absolute demand for cobalt will increase in the next few years, mainly because the growth rate from vehicle and battery production will exceed the overall reduction rate of cobalt per battery unit.
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