Lead Ingot (Refined 99.97% & 99.985–99.99%)

Refined lead 99.97% to LME and ASTM B29 and high-purity 99.985–99.99%, primary and secondary refined, in pig ingots

Refined lead is bought on purity, the impurities a battery plant cares about, and where the metal came from. The LME contract calls for 99.970% Pb minimum, matching ASTM B29 Refined Pure Lead and EN 12659 PB970R; high-purity grades at 99.985% (PB985R) and 99.990% (PB990R) carry tighter limits on bismuth, silver, copper, antimony, tin, arsenic and nickel, because those elements drive gassing and self-discharge in lead-acid batteries, so they are the grades that go into leady oxide for plates. Antimonial and calcium alloys are separate products made from this metal and are not this page. Brand matters as with every exchange metal: pig ingots from a smelter whose brand is LME-registered trade at LME plus a premium on a known chemistry, while off-brand lead is bought on its own certificate of analysis and independent sampling. Pigs are cast at around 25 kg, or 40–50 kg depending on the plant, stacked and strapped in bundles of about 1–1.2 MT. Much of the world's refined lead is secondary: recycled lead-acid batteries broken, smelted and refined back to 99.97% or better. Secondary refined lead meets the same standards, but the buyer should ask for the refiner's origin documentation, meaning where the used batteries were collected and the refiner's operating and environmental permit, because informal battery recycling is a known source of contaminated and undocumented metal. On the trade, UN Comtrade 2024 export declarations under HS 7801 (unwrought lead, refined, unrefined and alloyed together) sum to USD 6.98 billion and 2.37 million MT across the reporting countries, led by India (USD 883 million), Korea (USD 720 million; 318,572 MT), Australia (USD 678 million; 272,809 MT), the UK (USD 442 million) and Malaysia (USD 405 million).

The buyers are lead-acid battery makers — starter, motorcycle, inverter, UPS and traction batteries — and their oxide plants, plus cable sheathing, radiation shielding, sheet lead and lead chemical users, in the Gulf, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa and Turkiye. CBIL is a commodity brokerage company and brokers refined lead ingot from primary smelter, secondary refiner and trader parcels of Korean, Australian, British, German, Indian and Mexican origin, and it does not broker used batteries or battery paste, which are hazardous waste under the Basel Convention. Every offer is worked against the producer's certificate of analysis, the brand certificate, a certificate of origin and, for secondary metal, the refiner's battery-sourcing documentation, and against producer or warehouse documents and inspection rather than a seller's word: paper-metal fraud is a known risk in refined metals, so independent weighing and sampling at stuffing by SGS, Bureau Veritas or Intertek is part of a normal contract. Lead is dense cargo, strapped bundles loaded to about 25 MT in a 20-foot container, on FOB, CFR and CIF terms. Send the purity and standard, your limits on bismuth, silver and copper, primary or secondary acceptance, monthly tonnage and discharge port, and the desk matches refiner parcels against them.

Excluded origins are not offered, including product re-exported, blended or re-processed through a third country. Every lot moves with a certificate of origin naming the producing plant, mine or grower country, and nothing is quoted before the seller and loading point are known.