Qianhai Mercantile Exchange (QME), a Chinese commodities trading platform, is working with its sister company, the London Metal Exchange, to launch battery metal contracts.
The bourse, owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), was studying the possibility of offering investors the chance to buy and sell spot contracts of lithium carbonate, nickel sulphate and cobalt, said Dong Feng, general manager of the QME.
Cobalt, lithium and nickel are the three critical metals used to make batteries for use in electric cars, regarded as the future of transport.
“Battery metals have become a major target for investment and merger,” Dong said at the LME Asia Metals Seminar in Hong Kong on Tuesday.
Demand for the metals has boomed in the last couple of years, driving up their price.
Qianhai Mercantile Exchange (QME), a Chinese commodities trading platform, is working with its sister company, the London Metal Exchange, to launch battery metal contracts.
The bourse, owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), was studying the possibility of offering investors the chance to buy and sell spot contracts of lithium carbonate, nickel sulphate and cobalt, said Dong Feng, general manager of the QME.
Cobalt, lithium and nickel are the three critical metals used to make batteries for use in electric cars, regarded as the future of transport.
“Battery metals have become a major target for investment and merger,” Dong said at the LME Asia Metals Seminar in Hong Kong on Tuesday.
Demand for the metals has boomed in the last couple of years, driving up their price.
Benchmark prices of lithium in China, for example, doubled during 2022. Dubbed “the new oil” or “white gold” of the new-energy era, lithium in particular has emerged as a critical mineral in China’s competition with the United States.
“What we can do with QME is that we can trade in the so-called spot market,” said Matthew Chamberlain, CEO of the London Metal Exchange, in an interview on the sidelines of the seminar.
“For physical participants, let’s say, lithium carbonate, or nickel sulphate, QME can generate really reliable [yuan] based pricing for that, and then we can go and launch contracts, be that in Hong Kong or London. [That would be] something that we think is really exciting.”
Learn more: South China Morning Post 