Holding the "Lithium Triangle" Salt Lake Project for more than three years, Tibet's Mount Everest (600338, SH) finally made a big move on 202 1. In the second half of 200210, Mount Qomolangma in Tibet first threw out a plan of 8 billion yuan, and then signed an investment agreement with the government of Salta province in Argentina of1700 million US dollars. During this period, the pilot scheme of extracting lithium from raw brine was introduced successively by Hi-Tech and Zhongnan Lithium Industry in the Ninth Five-Year Plan. For a time, Mount Qomolangma in Tibet became a rookie of lithium extraction plate in salt lake.
However, Mount Everest in Tibet has been repeatedly questioned in the past three years that the progress of the salt lake project is not as good as expected. Under the existing capacity planning, the development progress of Mount Everest in Tibet not only lags behind the peers in the industry, but also the cash flow situation is difficult to support the high investment in the future. It is not easy to cross the border, and Everest in Tibet still has to speak with actual sales.
In the 202 1 hot salt lake lithium extraction plate, Mount Everest in Tibet is a rookie. However, the fierce battle for lithium mines in salt lakes was rehearsed at Mount Everest in Tibet as early as three years ago. At that time, the demand for new energy vehicles was on the rise. As a key raw material for power batteries, the prices of lithium salt products such as lithium carbonate have risen.
Mount Everest in Tibet smells business opportunities. 2065438+April 2008, Tibet Everest acquired overseas lithium resources exploration and development enterprises through its shareholding company Everest Hong Kong (now a subsidiary of Tibet Everest Holdings) and laid out the lithium salt lake project in Argentina. The transaction price is about US$ 200 million, which is equivalent to the net profit of Mount Everest in Tibet in 20 17 years.
Tibet's Everest claims that after the acquisition, it will actively promote the construction of Argentina's lithium salt lake project and strive for early output and early income. However, after carrying lithium for three years, Mount Everest in Tibet has the dilemma of having money to buy and no money to build. The lithium extraction project in salt lake has obvious characteristics of high capital expenditure density. In response to an inquiry from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Mount Everest in Tibet said that shortly after the acquisition of the Argentine Salt Lake project, the price of lithium carbonate plummeted due to the short-term contradiction between supply and demand, and the related financing work was blocked.
At the same time, from 20 18 to 2020, the performance of Mount Everest in Tibet continued to decline, and the net profit returned to the mother in 2020 was only 0.3 1 100 million yuan. Tibet Everest 202 1 semi-annual report shows that not only the sales of lithium salt products have not been settled, but also the three-year capacity expansion has not been approved by the EIA.
Just like the lithium extraction plate in the salt lake, which has been silent for many years, the Everest in Tibet has turned for the better under the high demand of new energy.
In September 20021year, Mount Everest in Tibet announced that it planned to raise 8 billion yuan. Among them, 3.7 billion yuan will be used to further expand the production capacity of Argentina's angeles Salt Lake project. Previously, the equivalent capacity of lithium carbonate in Angelis Salt Lake was 2,500 tons. Tibet's Everest said that it will carry out a lithium extraction project with 50,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year in the original brine of salt lake, which will realize an annual net profit of 65.438+35.2 million yuan and a construction period of 654.38+0.2 months.
In addition, in 20021,1 1, Mount Everest in Tibet also signed an agreement with the government of Salta, Argentina, indicating that it will invest a total of/kloc-0.7 billion US dollars to build a lithium carbonate project in the salt lake of Argentina. This is considered by the outside world as a sign of the official launch of the lithium salt lake project in Argentina, Tibet. However, by the end of the third quarter of 2002/kloc-0, the monetary fund of Mount Everest in Tibet was only1030,000 yuan, and the balance of cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period was about 44 million yuan. Tibet Everest bluntly said that the company's own funds could not meet the above investment needs in the short term; There is a risk that it will not be implemented on schedule, and the content and quantity of implementation will also change.
The return of the value of "extracting lithium from salt lake" is inseparable from the continuous maturity of lithium extraction technology. And high-quality salt lakes mean lower technical threshold. For Everest, a monk in Tibet, the lack of lithium extraction technology accumulation is another big development barrier, which is one of the reasons why it chose to lay out the Argentine salt lake project.
The two key technical indexes to judge the quality of salt lake water are lithium content and magnesium-lithium ratio. Lithium salt lakes in China are mainly distributed in Tibet and Qinghai. Except for a few high-quality salt lakes in Tibet, the lithium content and magnesium-lithium ratio of most salt lakes in China are not as good as those in South America's "lithium triangle" (Bolivia, Chile and Argentina).
"Thanks to the characteristics of high lithium concentration and low magnesium-lithium ratio, (the company) has high cost competitiveness." Tibet Everest said. According to reports, the lithium content of Angelis Salt Lake attached to Mount Everest in Tibet is 490mg/L, and the ratio of magnesium to lithium is 3.8. Chaerhan Salt Lake, which belongs to Salt Lake Company (SZ) and Zangge Mining Company (SZ), is rich in lithium resources, but the ratio of magnesium to lithium is as high as 1800, which brings higher difficulty and technical threshold for lithium extraction.
Extracting lithium from raw brine is becoming the mainstream technical exploration direction of high lithium salt lakes. Orient securities Research Report believes that extracting lithium from raw brine not only improves the recovery rate of lithium resources, but also greatly shortens the production cycle of products. Mount Everest in Tibet also clearly defined its salt lake project as "extracting lithium from raw brine" in the fixed increase plan.
According to the reply of Mount Everest in Tibet on the interactive platform, Mount Everest in Tibet has signed cooperation agreements with Hi-Tech (30063 1, SZ) and Zhongnan Lithium Industry respectively. The former's "adsorption+membrane method" and the latter's "electrochemical deintercalation method" are both pilot schemes. Both schemes can extract lithium from raw brine. Among them, the recovery rate of lithium extraction in the Ninth Five-Year High-tech Project is expected to reach 88%, which is much higher than the distributed precipitation method (generally around 40%).
It is worth mentioning that in the "Lithium Triangle", a hot spot for lithium mine investment, besides novice players such as Mount Everest in Tibet, industry giants such as Ganfeng Lithium Industry (002460, SZ) and Tianqi Lithium Industry (002466, SZ) have already been laid out. Lithium mining enterprises, mainly domestic salt lakes, have also entered the period of capacity climbing. For Mount Everest in Tibet, when is the real transcript?
National business daily