Looking at the world, the development of the new energy vehicle market has accelerated in recent years. The good development of new energy vehicles has driven the rapid growth of the demand for power battery separators. According to estimates by Dongxing Securities, the global demand for power battery separators is expected to reach 3.046 billion, 3.844 billion, and 4.669 billion square meters in 2020-2022, an increase of 66.85%, 26.19%, and 21.47% respectively. This brings huge market opportunities to Chinese lithium battery separator companies.
Leading companies actively expand production
In 2020, the enthusiasm for investment and expansion of Chinese lithium battery separator companies is rising.
In April of this year, Chinese lithium battery leading manufacturer SHEJ released the "Plan for Non-Public Issuance of A Shares in 2020", which is intended to raise funds of no more than 5 billion yuan for the first phase expansion project of the subsidiary JSEJ lithium ion battery separator, WXEJ new material industry The second-stage expansion project of the base. The total investment of the JSEJ project is RMB 1.75 billion, and it is expected to add 400 million square meters of lithium battery separator capacity every year; the total investment of the WXEJ project is RMB 2.8 billion, and it is expected to add an annual output of 520 million square meters of lithium battery separator base film and 300 million Production capacity of square meters of lithium battery coated film.
It is understood that in recent years, the SHEJ Group has frequently used the capital market to continuously expand its production capacity. As of the end of 2019, the production capacity of the SHEJ Group wet diaphragm has reached 2.3 billion square meters, with a total of 30 A wet process base film production line. SHEJ Group predicts that the company's diaphragm production capacity will reach 2.9 billion square meters in 2020.
SHEJ's technology has been granted patents related to the composition of PVDF series solvent-based coating materials of Teijin Co., Ltd. and patents related to the coating process of phase separation method.
On March 27, SHPT issued an announcement that the company plans to raise 4.95 billion yuan through a non-public offering to invest in the construction of lithium-ion battery separators, new-type coated separators for power batteries and other projects. SHPT plans to construct "Project with an annual output of 249 million square meters of lithium ion battery separators" and "Project with an annual output of 50,000 million square meters of new-type coated separators for high safety power batteries" in JS and FJ.
According to SHPT, the above two projects are to further plan the production capacity of the basement membrane while making corresponding capacity planning for the customer's capacity expansion plan, and to stabilize the company's competitiveness in the field of diaphragms. In addition, the “Lithium Battery Separator High Speed Line R & D Project” to be invested this time will help to further improve the company ’s integrated production efficiency of wet-process separator products and reduce costs.
Industry analysis pointed out that the market concentration of the lithium battery industry is increasing, and the production capacity of first-class lithium battery manufacturers that occupy 80% of the domestic and foreign market share is huge. Therefore, whether they have the supply capacity that matches the needs of these battery companies will become their choice. The first choice for diaphragm suppliers.
Market concentration is getting higher and higher
Separator is one of the four key materials for lithium battery, and it is also a relatively late-start material, but the domestic separator industry has developed rapidly in recent years. Liu Yanlong, secretary general of the China Chemical and Physical Power Industry Association, said that currently domestic diaphragm products have accounted for more than 90% of the domestic diaphragm market. In addition to continuously meeting the needs of domestic battery companies, many domestic high-end products have been exported to LG, Panasonic, etc. in large quantities. Foreign mainstream battery companies.
The technical routes of lithium battery separators include dry unidirectional stretching, dry bidirectional stretching and wet methods. At present, most domestic manufacturers are moving forward with dry and wet methods. Among them, CZMZ wet process membrane production capacity is 190 million square meters, and dry process membrane production capacity is 100 million square meters. SZXY has dry process, wet process and coated separator preparation technologies. In 2019, its dry process project plans to build a new dry process separator with an annual output of 400 million square meters, an annual output of 360 million square meters of lithium ion battery wet separator project, and annual processing. A high-performance lithium-ion battery coated separator project with a capacity of 1 billion square meters.
The leading domestic company SHEJ is mainly based on wet process diaphragms, and its production capacity ranks first in the world. Although the price of the diaphragm has dropped, after SHEJ acquired SZJL, the overall market share of the wet-process diaphragm in China was as high as 60%. At present, the development of SHEJ wet diaphragm products has reached more than 80 varieties, and the rich product categories can meet the different needs of customers. SHEJ has now entered the supply chain of most of the world's battery manufacturers, including Panasonic, LG, CATL and other leading global battery companies, and has also become an indirect supplier of Tesla.
From the perspective of the market pattern, as industry competition has intensified in recent years and industry reshuffles have led to the withdrawal of backward production capacity, the concentration of the domestic diaphragm industry is getting higher and higher. It is understood that the gross profit of some diaphragm companies is still maintained at a relatively high level, but it has declined to varying degrees compared to the previous year. In particular, with the further decline in the average price of the diaphragm and the further increase in industry concentration, the performance of enterprises in the industry has diverged.
As of now, many diaphragm manufacturers have issued financial reports. The financial report released by SHEJ shows that in 2019, the company achieved a total operating income of 3.16 billion yuan, an increase of 28.57% year-on-year; it realized a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 850 million yuan, an increase of 63.92% year-on-year. For the performance growth, SHEJ stated that the main reason is that the company's wet-process lithium battery separator business has been brought into full play, and the company's internal fine management and active development of the domestic and overseas markets have contributed to the steady growth of wet-process lithium battery separator production and sales The company's overall profitability has improved significantly.
In addition, ZCKJ recently released its first quarterly report for 2020. The company's first quarter lithium battery separator sales revenue was 290 million yuan, an increase of 8.68% year-on-year; net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 242 million yuan, an increase of 11.52% year-on-year.
With the fierce competition in the lithium ion battery separator industry, the development space of lithium ion battery separator manufacturers that do not have independent research and design capabilities will gradually shrink. The competition in the domestic separator industry will mainly focus on raw material formulation technology, microporous preparation technology, and equipment design In terms of capabilities, product quality and sales channels, the market share of lithium-ion battery separator manufacturers with independent core technologies, stable product quality and sales channels has steadily increased.
Industry analysis believes that the domestic battery separator industry has begun to adjust and reorganize. The market shows that the strong are stronger and the weak are out. The development of small and micro enterprises lacking technology, few brands and short capital is not optimistic. The separator industry will further accelerate in the future Shuffle.