November 5, 2021: The 19th Asian Battery Conference opened with the positive message that lead was ‘no longer the forgotten battery metal’, and that there were plenty of opportunities for the industry in the future.

Its message was backed up by opening remarks from Daramic president Chad Schuchmann who looked back and discussed how the industry had kept the world in motion during the pandemic.

This is the first virtual ABC in its history.   The last one was held in September 2019 in Bali, Indonesia and was widely regarded as a huge success for its networking opportunities and live presentations.

Mark Stevenson, co-organizer of the event and director of Global Lead Technologies, said, however, there were some advantages with online events. “One of the positives is pre-recording presentations, which is less daunting, and the quality remains high,” he said.

“We can also reach a much broader audience, and reach out to people who may never have come to a physical conference. We need to concentrate on bringing newer, younger blood into this industry and this format gives us a chance to do that.”

However, closing his opening remarks, he said: “I hope the ABC marks the end of virtual events. We really all need to get back face to face, open up the business and enjoy each other’s friendship again.”

Daramic president Chad Schuchmann said the industry had come into its own during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Even though we have witnessed many changes in our industry, one thing that has not changed is how critical our industry is in keeping the world in motion,” he said. “We saw how critical it was when our lead battery technology supplied power to mobile medical units in hospitals in some of their deepest and most challenging times.

“We also witnessed lead-acid batteries keeping communications systems running for healthcare professionals and these are only a few of the numerous examples of how our industry served and continues to serve the critical needs of our global citizens.”

He said the growing list of applications that were best suited for high-performance lead batteries should give the industry confidence to continue innovating and improving technologies.

While few delegates would disagree with the increasing presence of lithium-ion batteries into the battery industry — largely because of the different country mandates to ban the sale of new ICE cars by various dates — most were confident that other areas would offset declines in the auto industry.

“And the decline for ICE is slow and long — it will take decades rather than years,” said Neil Hawkes. “It won’t fall off a cliff — it will be more like death by a thousand cuts.

“There are also many reasons why lead could well perform better than investors are expecting. There is a longer tail in the replacement side of lead batteries in all parts of the world, and it will have auxiliary functions for years to come.

“The lead battery is also going to improve. There is always room for improvement and it happens — it’s not going to stand still, it will fight back. And gradual market share loss that we do see through time on the automotive side of the industry could easily be offset by gains in the non-automotive of industrial such as ESS.”

In India, for one example, as R&D president of Exide Industries Dipak Chaudhury explained in his presentation, home and small office back-up batteries were almost entirely lead-acid batteries, and with billions of dollars of government incentives being rolled out to encourage manufacture, this could only go up.

Farid Ahmed, principal analyst, lead markets with Wood Mackenzie, said the fact that auxiliary lead batteries needed in EVs were smaller than the SLIs in ICE vehicles would be more than offset by the fact that so many more would be needed.

He said new technologies, such as bipolar batteries, meant the lead battery was fighting back and had the potential to close the gap with lithium-ion in terms of performance and certainly cost.

The three-day online event has been well attended, with networking opportunities and virtual booths running alongside the presentations, which will finish later today (Friday).

As well as the online platform there have been differences this year in the conference set-up, with successful ‘one-on-one chats’ organized after every session and a WIN Big initiative with Sorfin Yoshimura.