Evolution of Global Secondary Lead Production
9
Fig. 2 Global lead production recovered from secondary feed materials via primary smelters
been lower. Higher prices meant that used lead–acid batteries, while still a hazardous
waste requiring proper collection and processing to recover the lead, now had a net
positive value. Official schemes to ensure collection of scrap batteries were no longer
strictly necessary. Scrap merchants were incentivised by the market to re-enter the
business to purchase and collect used lead–acid batteries and deliver them to battery
recyclers. As a consequence, but also in response to the construction of new capacity
to recycle batteries, the price of battery scrap soared. The secondary lead industry,
which had enjoyed a brief interlude of enhanced margins and profitability from 2005
through until the global financial crisis, found itself under financial pressure again
as competition for scrap feed intensified (Fig. 3).
CHR Metals has a simple model which reflects changes in lead–acid battery
recycling rates in all countries excluding China. Although the data is based only on
assumptions about the share of lead consumed in SLI and industrial batteries and the
useful average lives of these batteries, it does show a clear relationship between the
price of lead and the estimated percent of scrapped batteries actually recycled. In the
early 2000s, when the price of lead was very low, the volume of lead recovered from
scrap batteries appears to have fallen some way below the volume of scrap available
to be recycled in used batteries. When, in 2005, the price of lead began to increase,
so too did the recycling rate. And with higher prices well established in the years
after the global financial crisis and greater capacity to recycle batteries, recycling
rates may then have approached 100%.
Although recycling rates this high are to be welcomed, it is probably the case that
some of the apparent increase in annual recycling rates may have been accounted
for by the mobilisation of scrap generated in earlier years and more particularly in
countries which might not previously had much of an industry in collecting and
9
Fig. 2 Global lead production recovered from secondary feed materials via primary smelters
been lower. Higher prices meant that used lead–acid batteries, while still a hazardous
waste requiring proper collection and processing to recover the lead, now had a net
positive value. Official schemes to ensure collection of scrap batteries were no longer
strictly necessary. Scrap merchants were incentivised by the market to re-enter the
business to purchase and collect used lead–acid batteries and deliver them to battery
recyclers. As a consequence, but also in response to the construction of new capacity
to recycle batteries, the price of battery scrap soared. The secondary lead industry,
which had enjoyed a brief interlude of enhanced margins and profitability from 2005
through until the global financial crisis, found itself under financial pressure again
as competition for scrap feed intensified (Fig. 3).
CHR Metals has a simple model which reflects changes in lead–acid battery
recycling rates in all countries excluding China. Although the data is based only on
assumptions about the share of lead consumed in SLI and industrial batteries and the
useful average lives of these batteries, it does show a clear relationship between the
price of lead and the estimated percent of scrapped batteries actually recycled. In the
early 2000s, when the price of lead was very low, the volume of lead recovered from
scrap batteries appears to have fallen some way below the volume of scrap available
to be recycled in used batteries. When, in 2005, the price of lead began to increase,
so too did the recycling rate. And with higher prices well established in the years
after the global financial crisis and greater capacity to recycle batteries, recycling
rates may then have approached 100%.
Although recycling rates this high are to be welcomed, it is probably the case that
some of the apparent increase in annual recycling rates may have been accounted
for by the mobilisation of scrap generated in earlier years and more particularly in
countries which might not previously had much of an industry in collecting and