The Zhitong Finance App learned that recently, research institute evTank and Ivy Economic Research Institute jointly released the “White Paper on the Development of China's Cylindrical Lithium-ion Battery Industry (2024)”. According to the white paper data, in 2023, global cylindrical lithium-ion battery shipments increased slightly by 3.5% year-on-year to 12.37 billion units.

According to the white paper analysis, the main drivers for the increase in global cylindrical battery shipments in 2023 are: (1) the increase in sales of electric vehicles represented by Tesla led to an increase in EV cylindrical shipments; (2) the increase in ESS cylinder shipments was driven by high demand in the home storage and portable energy storage markets. However, in the consumer sector, small power markets such as electric two-wheelers, electric tools, and vacuum cleaners are still being negatively affected to a certain extent, causing small cylinder shipments to maintain a downward trend, but the overall decline has narrowed.

According to the “White Paper on the Development of China's Cylindrical Lithium-ion Battery Industry (2024)” published by EVtank, despite a recovery in global demand for cylindrical batteries, it is mainly beneficial to Japanese and South Korean companies focusing on the EV and ESS sectors. Among them, LGES and Panasonic mainly supplied Tesla, and shipments increased 12.9% and 3.7% year-on-year respectively, continuing to maintain global leadership; SDI is biased towards the consumer market, affected by declining aggregate demand and domestic competition. Both shipments and market share have declined.

Looking at the domestic market, compared to 2022, Everweft Lithium Energy (300014.SZ) and Hengdian Dongji (002056.SZ) performed well. While maintaining traditional customers, the former increased market development in India and Southeast Asia, and the growth momentum was strong; the latter relied on the electric two-wheeler and portable energy storage market, and shipments increased 75.4% year on year in 2023, becoming the “dark horse” of the industry.

Judging from the competitive pattern of major cylindrical companies in 2023, industry concentration increased further. Among them, the total market share of the top three companies LGES, Japan's Panasonic, and South Korea's SDI increased by 10.1%, while the domestic market share of Everweft Lithium Energy and Hengdian Dongji increased by 0.1% and 1.2% respectively. The rest showed varying degrees of decline.

The Ivey Institute of Economics stated in a white paper that the future demand side growth of cylindrical batteries will still be dominated by EVs and ESS, and large cylindrical batteries represented by 4680 and 4695 are expected to become the mainstream models of automotive batteries in 2025.

In addition, the market space for consumer demand-side tool batteries is growing steadily. The opportunities mainly come from Chinese companies replacing products from Japanese and South Korean companies; strong demand in the Indian market for electric two-wheelers, with LGES, Everweft Lithium Energy, and BAK taking the lead; the portable energy storage market space is growing rapidly. Europe, America, and Japan are growing at a high rate, and Everweft Lithium Energy and Hengdian Magnetic have a relatively rapid layout.

From the supply side, EVtank points out that the impact of large-scale production expansion by Chinese companies due to the higher-than-expected growth of the small cylinder market in 2021 continues, and the overall capacity utilization rate will remain low in 2023. Subsequent increases in utilization mainly depend on the company's development of new application fields and new markets.