In May 2012, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially announced the Lead-acid Battery Industry Access Conditions, which came into effect from July 1. The document requires that the new, reorganized and expanded lead-acid battery capacities of the same plant shall be no less than 500,000 kVA, the existing lead-acid battery capacity of the same plant shall be not be less than 200,000 kVA, the existing battery plate capacity of the same plant shall be no lower than one million kVA, prohibits the reorganization and expansion of plates and outsourcing plate assembled batteries, and puts forward clear requirements on the production technology and equipment to improve the industry access threshold.
In 2012, as a large number of lead-acid battery companies that didn´t meet national environmental requirements were eliminated, qualified enterprises successively increased production capacity and output to seize vacated market share. In the same year, Chinese lead-acid battery output was 175 million kVA, an increase of 23% over the same period in 2011. Following the ever-growing market demand for electric bicycle batteries, automotive starter batteries, electric vehicle batteries and energy storage batteries, lead-acid battery output in 2015 is expected to reach 240 million kVA.
Lead-acid battery products are mainly used in automotive starter storage batteries, electric bicycle power batteries, fixed-type batteries for communication, energy storage batteries and other fields.
