In recent years, China’s rapid economic development, technological innovation, increasing the level of development of the Chinese battery industry has brought a rare opportunity, lithium-ion batteries, lead-acid battery industry has made considerable progress, while the downstream automotive and consumer electronic products demand rising rapidly, effectively pulling the battery exports. At the same time increased the emerging markets business development efforts, also contributed to export growth, half of the Shenzhen port in addition to India and ASEAN to maintain a rapid increase in exports, but Russia, Brazil and other emerging markets, exports maintained a rapid growth, respectively. exported 10.55 million and 5.664 million, increased by 36.8% and 63.3%. On the other hand, the rapid rise in raw material prices this year, labor costs also increased significantly, to prop up the export price of the battery.
Chinese battery manufacturing enterprises, state of the industry at a low level of competition, coupled with domestic environmental laws and regulations are inadequate, insufficient investment in environmental protection, environmental protection equipment investment, to account for a regular lead-acid battery manufacturers a total investment of 20% 30% of the annual running costs of environmental control facilities have thousands of yuan. At present, many SMEs in the total assets of lead-acid batteries only 200 million to 300 million, production of waste produced by the process to take environmental protection measures in place, many small businesses take the basic manual or semi-manual mode of operation, did not take dust processing, smelting process emissions of lead vapor, dust and other than the national standard lead times or even several times. Investment in environmental protection requirements need to take a lot of money, companies are not enthusiastic about the initiative to high, poor management of the current situation, blood lead and other security incidents have occurred, hindering the healthy development of battery manufacturers.
At present, China’s battery industry products focused on lead-acid batteries and nickel-metal hydride batteries, and lithium battery represented in the field of electronic information more widely, the industry is not strong export competitiveness have become increasingly prominent, the other technical deficiencies , the lack of brand awareness has also led to industry competitiveness.
Dependence on imported raw materials upstream of the deepening development of the industry in a passive position. Current export varieties of lithium-based batteries, lithium iron phosphate as a high energy density, low prices, excellent safety performance, a lithium battery cathode material of choice for the industry, the domestic annual demand of 8,000 tons, the output only 2500 tons, needs to import large quantities from abroad, but the world’s major manufacturers of the United States, Valence A123 and Tianjin Stellan two companies, industry production capacity is more concentrated, resulting in the Chinese industry frequently subject to foreign imports of raw materials; As another major export variety of lead-acid batteries, in the first half, China imported 661,000 tons of lead ores and concentrates, an increase of 9.7%, while the average import price of $ 2,291 per ton, up sharply 73.3%, import price growth is clearly ahead of imports, it is easy Chinese companies lead to price increases as the loss of low-cost advantages of lead-acid batteries, industrial development is inhibited.
