New Energy Prospect (ID: xinnengyuanqianzhan) original.
Text 丨 Shen XVI.
Editor丨 and smooth.
Mr. Dong, hello, I have a project on lithium titanate batteries in my hand, I don't know if you have paid attention to this aspect? ”
9 years ago, a sentence from Wei Yincang, the founder of Zhuhai Yinlong, ignited the cross-border dream of Dong Mingzhu, the "Iron Lady".
In December 2016, at the China Manufacturing Summit Forum, Dong Mingzhu joined hands with Wanda Group, Jingdong, CIMC and other 4 companies to invest a total of 3 billion yuan in Zhuhai Yinlong, and obtained 22388% equity.
In Dong Mingzhu's view, new energy is an excellent opportunity for the transformation of China's manufacturing industry, so she chose to take action.
StillDue to daily operations and other problems, Zhuhai Yinlong did not meet Dong Mingzhu's expectation of "creating another Gree", and became a "drag oil bottle". In August 2021, Gree used 182.8 billion yuan won 30 percent of Yinlong New Energy47% of the equity, Yinlong New Energy into a holding subsidiary, and renamed "Gree Titanium".
Gree Electric paid for Dong Mingzhu's "cross-border lithium battery dream".
On the evening of December 19, 2023, Gree Electric announced that it intends to take 10The transaction consideration of 1.5 billion yuan was 27.1 billion shares.
The next day, the stock price of Gree Electric Appliances crashed, and the market value evaporated 13.2 billion yuan in one day, but Dong Mingzhu was still optimistic about Gree Titanium. Obviously, Dong Mingzhu's cross-border dream is not over, and the "capital feast" behind the cross-border lithium battery is not over.
Famous for high-profile cross-border lithium batteries, there is no one better than Dong Mingzhu.
In 2016, Dong Mingzhu led the acquisition of 100% equity of Zhuhai Yinlong at a price of 13 billion yuan. At that time, the overall appraisal price of Gree Titanium was only about 413.8 billion yuan, nearly 3 times the premium.
Due to the opposition of the majority of minority investors, the acquisition was rejected at the shareholders' meeting. A few years later, Dong Mingzhu and Gree Electric still took Zhuhai Yinlong under their command.
Premium acquisition is only one of the means for many enterprises to cross the lithium battery industry, and self-built lithium battery industry chain is a "cross-border" routine operation.
For example, in October 2022, Southern Black Sesame Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Black Sesame") increased its capital by 500 million yuan to Tesson New Energy to enter the energy storage market. On March 31, 2023, Black Sesame announced that it intends to transform the business of its wholly-owned subsidiary, Jiangxi Xiaohei Xiaomi, into the production and operation of energy storage lithium batteries, and invest 3.5 billion yuan in Nanchang New District, Jiangxi Province to build a lithium iron phosphate energy storage lithium battery production base.
* Screenshot of the new energy outlook of the official website of Black Sesame.
According to the incomplete statistics of new energy prospects, in addition to the black sesame that sells food, Langsha shares that sell first, saint angelo that sells high-end, Daya Shengxiang that sells flooring, BASF that sells automotive chemicals, Kunlun Wanwei that sells game equipment, Industrial Fulian, which sells Apple equipment, Songdu shares, which sells houses, and Haichen Pharmaceutical, which sells medicines, are all in the cross-border layout of the lithium battery industry chain.
There are more and more enterprises entering the lithium battery industry, and talents have become a scarce resource.
Gu Yan, a lithium battery practitioner, revealed to the new energy prospect, "In the first two years, new energy was particularly hot, whether it was a large factory like CATL or some small cross-border factories that could not be named, they were all grabbing people." Sometimes, a job seeker sends out a resume in the morning and is contacted by HR from several companies in the afternoon. ”
The new energy circle is actually very small, and it is common for companies to raise salaries in order to grab people. Regarding the specific salary level, Gu Yan said that it was inconvenient to disclose.
However, according to public information, lithium battery pack engineers, BMS electronic engineers, process engineers, battery cell R&D engineers and other popular technical positions have an annual salary of 20-300,000 yuan. Many positions marked as "urgent", especially technical positions and senior managers who require independent design and research and development, are negotiable, and there may also be equity incentives.
* Screenshot of Maimai*** new energy outlook.
According to the data of the "Rushing for the Digital Era: Talent Migration Report 2023" released by the job search and recruitment community, in 2022, the number of job seekers in the new energy vehicle industry, which is strongly related to lithium batteries, will increase by 229 year-on-year2%, and its talent supply growth rate ranks first among many industries.
Seeing that "enterprises outside the circle" have crossed over to make batteries, Dai Zhihua, senior vice president of Xinwangda Power Technology Co., Ltd., an insider in the circle, couldn't help but pour a basin of cold water, "Cross-border batteries can not be done if you want to." ”
Dai Zhihua once said in an interview with **Batteries belong to the high-end manufacturing industry, involving long-term R&D investment, large-scale manufacturing consistency and stability, manufacturing cost control, etc., which is an industry with very high comprehensive thresholds and requirements, and is not a matter of simply building one or two production lines.
According to rough calculations, the lithium battery project with an annual output of 1GWh needs to invest 400 million yuan, and the cost is not low.
And that's just the upfront investment. Dai Zhihua revealed, "Car companies occupy a cost close to 1 3 battery manufacturers, the verification cycle is still very long, domestic car companies about 2 years, overseas car companies about 3 years." "There is a threshold for the access of the new energy vehicle chain, and after the safety is guaranteed, each link tends to be a stable head partner.
Therefore, another problem for cross-border lithium battery companies is to enter the first chain of car companies and lithium battery companies. The relevant person in charge of an aluminum alloy lower box business told the new energy prospect that there is fierce competition among the top business operators of battery companies, and the number of top business suppliers of the same product of a head enterprise was still more than a dozen two years ago, and now it has been streamlined to a few.
In the past two years, there is only the same type of elimination among the top merchants, but few new ones have come in. ”
The first chain of the head enterprise cannot be entered, which means that the cross-border lithium battery enterprise cannot get a large order, and the company's own battery production scale will be restricted.
Without economies of scale, how can we reduce battery costs?
Many lithium battery manufacturers said that lithium battery manufacturers are in the first volume, requiring to reduce the cost and weight of materials on the premise of ensuring the quality of battery packs, which requires strong research and development capabilities to pave the way. The two key points of improving R&D technology are to increase R&D expenses and deeply bind customers.
Cross-border lithium battery enterprises need to face the "war of grabbing" for traditional enterprises such as Sunwoda to improve the level of research and development.
According to the salary conditions released by Sunwoda on BOSS Zhipin, the monthly salary of a production line engineer with a bachelor's degree or above is between 12k-22k, and the annual salary is 1680,000 yuan to 30between 80,000 yuan.
* Sunwoda BOSS Zhipin Recruitment Information New Energy Prospects.
In order to further grab people, Sunwoda has launched an internal recommendation reward mechanism for many times. According to the tweet released by Sunwoda Recruitment***, in Sunwoda's 2023 on-campus promotion bonus activity, in-service employees who are successfully recommended for entry can receive bonuses ranging from 600 to 5,000 yuan. According to the event information, the bonus can be stacked and not capped.
* Sunwoda recruitment*** new energy preview screenshot.
Obviously, cross-border enterprises inevitably face a war of grabbing people from traditional lithium battery companies and lithium battery manufacturers. The R&D director of a battery manufacturer told New Energy Prospect that the common practice of battery factories is to "research a generation, prepare a generation, and produce a generation", and "if the R&D strength is not enough, it is pure marketing publicity".
Cross-border lithium batteries are full of difficulties, but there are still people who rise to the challenge.
Chao Chenglin, director of the Industrial Space Research Institute, a business expert, said that lithium battery technology is complex, involving materials, processes, equipment and other aspects, and cross-border enterprises need to invest a lot of money, time and talents in technology research and development and research. In addition, all links of the lithium battery industry chain are interrelated, and cross-border enterprises need to have the ability to integrate the industrial chain to ensure the rational allocation and synergy of resources.
Under the accumulation of a large amount of funds, many companies have successfully entered the threshold of lithium batteries, such as Longbai Group signed a procurement contract with BAK Battery, and Yuntianhua and EVE Lithium Energy signed a contract to build a new energy battery industry chain of 50 billion yuan.
Some people succeed, and naturally some people fall into the big pit of lithium batteries. Dong Mingzhu once claimed at the shareholders' meeting that "(Greti) this pit is too big and it will take a certain amount of time to fill it", but "the dawn is ahead".
Facts have proved that after the scandal of arrears of commercial payments, large-scale production reduction of the factory, the imprisonment of the former president Sun Guohua and others for embezzling the company's property, and the fact that the former chairman Wei Yincang fled overseas, Greti's strength was greatly reduced.
In the first half of 2023, Gree Titanium will only achieve revenue of 14400 million yuan, net profit -1$7.1 billion; The total assets of the company are 2431.1 billion yuan, with total liabilities of 2424.5 billion yuan, net assets of only 06.6 billion yuan.
Like Dong Mingzhu, there are only a few people who believe in the "dawn", and more companies choose to quietly stop lithium battery recruitment.
Taking Haichen Pharmaceutical as an example, as early as June 2022, the company said that it would invest 1500 million yuan for an annual output of 5,000 tons of lithium battery electrolyte additives, as well as 150 tons of anti-new crown API key intermediates construction projects. Later, in the results conference, Haichen Pharmaceutical said that the company's lithium battery electrolyte additive project is progressing normally, and trial production is expected to be carried out by the end of 2023.
The momentum of "cross-border lithium battery" is huge, but in the department setting and R&D center introduction displayed on the official website of Haichen Pharmaceutical, there is no setting of lithium battery-related departments.
* Screenshot of the new energy prospect on the official website of Haichen Pharmaceutical.
Even in the official *** of Haichen Pharmaceutical, there are still no articles with "lithium batteries".
In addition, Haichen Pharmaceutical, which claims that "the lithium battery electrolyte additive project is progressing smoothly" and "is actively expanding downstream customers", has not reached cooperation with car companies and lithium battery companies, and the contract liabilities of inventory and advance accounts have not increased significantly.
Coincidentally, the Southern Black Sesame Group, which claims to lay out lithium batteries and has not announced the termination of "cross-border", overclocking.
3. Yuntu Holdings and Taihe Technology did not release recruitment information related to lithium batteries.
In addition, there are many companies that choose to "openly surrender" to lithium batteries. Songdu Co., Ltd. terminated the acquisition of the Salt Lake Lithium Extraction Project, Kunlun Wanwei transferred the shares of the new energy enterprise (Beijing Green Vanadium New Energy Technology Co., Ltd.), Xinli Financial terminated the acquisition of BAK Power's equity, and Jolywood Co., Ltd. terminated the fixed increase for the lithium battery project.
The cross-border lithium battery track in 2023 is not as lively as in previous years.
According to incomplete statistics from the Gaogong Lithium Industry Research Institute, in 2023, there will be a total of 137 new planned projects for lithium batteries and the four main materials in China, a decrease of nearly half compared with 2022. According to the statistics of the 122 projects that announced the investment amount, the total planned investment in China's lithium battery industry in 2023 will be about 750 billion yuan, a decrease of more than 46% from 2022.
The craze for cross-border lithium batteries has quietly retreated.
Reference: Survey |Lithium power plant "involution" grabs people: ordinary workers earn nearly 10,000 yuan per month, and the salary of high-end talents doubles in 2 years".
Title image** in Visual China.
Gu Yan is a pseudonym in the article.
Disclaimer: Under no circumstances does the information or opinions expressed in this article constitute investment advice to any person.