SMM Jan. 9:
January is the traditional off-season for lead-acid battery retirement, leading to tight social recyclable resources and a significant increase in scrap battery prices. Amid high raw material costs and boosted by a broad rise in nonferrous metals, lead prices continued to strengthen during the week, prompting recyclers to hold a bullish outlook on scrap battery prices and hold back cargoes. To alleviate the wait-and-see sentiment among recyclers, a large lead smelter in central China proactively proposed a "unload first, settle later" transaction model, where recyclers unload goods on the same day and payment is settled based on the next day's price. According to informed enterprises, smelters' settlement prices for recyclers varied, with the highest number of daily procurement quote updates reaching 3-4 times per plant per day. Affected by this, procurement quotes in east China gradually became chaotic, and raw material arrivals at smelters also diverged. Currently, the mainstream price for scrap electric vehicle batteries with tax delivered to plants is 9,900-10,100 yuan/mt. SMM expects scrap battery prices to still have upside room next week.
Due to production restrictions from environmental protection-related controls last week, some smelters purchasing secondary crude lead for deep processing remain in a state of reduced or halted production, resulting in low procurement demand for secondary crude lead. Additionally, imported crude lead transactions concluded in December have been arriving at ports successively. Domestic secondary crude lead suppliers reported that shipments were sluggish during the week due to this impact, but cost pressure made it difficult to lower sales offers. As of Jan. 9, 2026, domestic secondary crude lead ex-works offers excluding tax ranged from 15,650 to 15,750 yuan/mt. With over 1 kt of overseas crude lead still expected to arrive at ports in mid-January, coupled with accumulated finished product inventories at domestic secondary crude lead smelters, SMM expects secondary crude lead supply to be slightly looser next week.
》Order and View SMM Metal Spot Historical Prices
