The Guangyuan Municipal Ecological Environment Bureau recently announced that it has approved the environmental impact assessment for a project building new energy battery materials (including solid-state battery materials) and manganese-based precursor materials.
The project is located in the Zhuangzi Biya Group of the Qingchuan Economic Development Zone in Sichuan, and is being invested in and constructed by Sichuan Xingheng Qingyuan New Materials Technology Co., Ltd. The plans include new production workshops, warehouses, maintenance workshops, a comprehensive building, hazardous waste storage rooms, and ancillary supporting facilities and equipment, along with a technical upgrade of the existing single-crystal manganese tetroxide production line.
Once completed, the plant will have an annual output of 50,000 tonnes of new energy battery materials (including solid-state battery materials) and manganese-based precursor materials, comprising 11,250 tonnes per year of lithium manganate, 35,000 tonnes per year of lithium manganese iron phosphate, and 3,750 tonnes per year of single-crystal manganese tetroxide.
Records show that Sichuan Xingheng Qingyuan New Materials Technology Co., Ltd., located in Qingchuan County, Guangyuan City, is a high-tech enterprise under Xingheng Power focused on the research, development, and production of lithium battery manganese-based materials. It has batch production capacity for single-crystal manganese tetroxide, pure manganese tetroxide, single-crystal manganese trioxide, polycrystalline manganese trioxide, manganese iron oxide, and pre-lithium manganese iron phosphate.
In recent years, Xingheng Power has continued to focus on the manganese-based battery route. "In the small power sector, especially electric two-wheelers and power tools, the core lies in extreme cost-effectiveness," a technical expert at Xingheng believes. Manganese-based materials, with their natural advantages of abundant resources and low cost, perfectly meet this core demand. In addition, the excellent low-temperature performance of manganese-based materials can precisely solve the problem of severe range degradation in small power products during winter.
It is understood that Xingheng's manganese-based batteries have achieved cumulative global shipments of 33 million packs, ranking first globally in shipments for seven consecutive years, with a market share of over 70% in domestic electric two-wheeler lithium batteries. Its subsidiary, Xingheng Qingyuan, will also firmly advance a dual-driven product matrix strategy of "manganese-based oxide materials" and "phosphate materials," comprehensively covering mainstream cathode material technologies.
With the iteration of cathode material technology, lithium-rich manganese-based materials have become the new-generation lithium battery cathode material with the greatest industrialization prospects after lithium iron phosphate and ternary materials. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has explicitly listed manganese-based cathodes as one of the core materials for next-generation power batteries requiring key breakthroughs, and technologies such as lithium manganese iron phosphate are accelerating into the fast track of mass production, with nearly all mainstream battery material companies having laid out plans.
Easpring Technology's lithium-rich manganese-based materials have achieved small-batch shipments and completed introduction to solid-state customers including CATL, Lishen Battery, WeLion New Energy, and Qingtao Energy; Tianli Lithium Energy's lithium-rich manganese-based products are compatible with sulfide systems and have entered the supply chains of CATL and BYD; Ronbay Technology's lithium-rich manganese-based materials have completed verification in sulfide and oxide systems, achieved small-batch shipments, and are supplying Toyota, WeLion New Energy, and CATL.
Industry observers believe that around 2028, manganese-based cathode materials will occupy an important position in the power battery market, especially in the mid-to-high-end electric vehicle and energy storage sectors, becoming a key force driving the development of the new energy industry.