SMM Lead Zinc Summit: Growth of downstream lead demand to slow

NANNING, May 24 (SMM) – Growth of domestic downstream demand for lead is likely to slow this year as lead consumption from power batteries decline, said Xia Wenming, SMM's senior analyst of the lead industry.

At the SMM Lead Zinc Summit on Thursday May 24 in Nanning, Guangxi province, Xia said that the decline of output of domestic new vehicles in recent years accounted for the overcapacity in China's power battery industry. 

The electric bicycle industry, which was one of the major users of power batteries, is expected to use fewer power batteries as the industry's peak has passed, Xia believed. Lead consumption by electric bicycles saw negative growth for the first time in 2014, and fell to a low in 2015. Electric bicycles and lead-acid batteries are increasingly replaced by shared bikes and lithium batteries, as the development of new energy sources in recent years accelerate. Lithium batteries have a longer life cycle than traditional lead-acid batteries. 

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