The lithium battery industry is developing rapidly and the market demand for electronic grade N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) continues to rise.

N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) has high chemical stability, low toxicity, low volatility, biodegradability and other properties, and is widely used as an excellent organic solvent. NMP was first used in petrochemicals, pesticides, coatings and other fields. However, as the purity of NMP continues to improve, electronic-grade NMP is used as a semiconductor solvent due to its higher purity (usually above 99.8%) and fewer impurities. It is used in lithium electronic batteries. The demand for medium-sized applications is high.

Electronic-grade NMP is the main auxiliary material for lithium battery cathodes. With the development of the lithium battery industry, market demand continues to rise. In 2020, due to the introduction of a number of consumption-stimulating policies by the Chinese government, the domestic demand market has shown a stable growth trend, and the market demand for lithium electronic batteries has increased rapidly. Among them, the new energy vehicle field has a better growth momentum, followed by the consumer electronics and electric bicycle fields. , emerging markets such as TWS and electric ships performed better. Driven by the development of the above industries, my country’s lithium battery market demand has grown steadily. It is expected that my country’s lithium battery production will reach 22.2 billion units in 2021, continuing the growth momentum. With the rapid development of the lithium battery industry, the market demand for battery-grade NMP will show a trend.

In 2021, the price of the lithium battery industry will show an upward trend. As one of the key raw materials for lithium batteries, the price of electronic grade NMP has also been rising. In November, it rose to the highest price of 47,000 yuan/ton. The current price is about 46,000 yuan/ton. , the growth rate in the past year has exceeded 274%, and it is expected that the price may exceed 50,000 yuan/ton in the future. The current domestic NMP production capacity is about 600,000 tons. Against the background of high profits as industry prices continue to rise, many companies have been attracted to deploy, such as Wanhua Chemical, Yuneng Chemical, Tiannai Technology, etc., all of which have newly built or expanded production capacity. At present, The planned expansion capacity is approximately 230,000 tons.

According to the “China N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) Industry Market In-depth Research and Development Trend Forecast Research Report 2021-2025” released by the Industrial Research Center It shows that in terms of market competition, in terms of high-purity NMP production, my country started late, and there are few companies that can truly produce high-quality, high-purity electronic-grade NMP. The domestic high-end NMP market is mainly dominated by Mitsubishi Chemical, BASF, It is occupied by foreign companies such as Maiqi Chemical. Currently, the domestic companies in the NMP field mainly include Changxin Chemical, Yuneng Chemical, Maiqi Chemical and other companies, which are mainly concentrated in the mid- to low-end. Therefore, the current domestic output of electronic-grade NMP is low, and market demand still relies on imports.

Industry analysts said that benefiting from the development of the new energy automobile industry and the rise of electric bicycles, TWS and other industries, the application of lithium batteries Rising demand is driving the development of the battery-grade NMP industry. Electronic-grade NMP is a high-end product with high production technology threshold. The domestic market is currently mainly occupied by foreign companies, domestic output is low, and market demand relies on imports. Affected by external demand in 2021, the price of electronic grade NMP in my country has been rising, which has stimulated domestic companies to make plans and will accelerate the development of the domestic electronic grade NMP industry.