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IRUNIVERSE recently attended the 6th International Secondary Lead Conference (ISLC) and the 18th Asian Battery Conference (ABC) from the 2nd to the 6th of September. These are international conferences specialising in secondary lead and lead-acid batteries, and on this occasion held at the Westin Resort Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. The major topic of the ISLC was secondary lead, whilst the ABC focused on the production and technology of lead-acid batteries.

The total number of participants was 250 for the ISLC, the biggest number ever, and over 800 for the ABC. This can be described as the world’s biggest “Festival of lead and lead-acid batteries”.

This was the first time IRUNIVERSE participated in this event as part of the Japanese media contingent. What we observed throughout the conferences was the industry’s steadiness due to its long-time reliability and achievement whilst, at the same time, that lead is under sharper criticism year by year.

The detailed report of the conferences will be released later but now to introduce some comments from two important people who spoke with IRUNIVERSE at the conclusion of the conferences.

Mark Stevenson from Global Lead Technologies, who served as a conference-chair for both events, the ISLC and ABC said, “We hope you all will spend quality time here and be happy” with a smile and provided a friendly message for Japanese companies, “The size of these conferences has been getting bigger and bigger. The next one will be held in September 2021 and we look forward to meeting more Japanese lead smelting companies and lead battery makers then”.

Mr Stevenson is an experienced professional in the lead industry, who has been working in the industry for the past 30 years including his time at Nyrstar, and he is currently mainly focused on his consulting service which requires him to travel all over the world.

We also received comments from Dr. David Rand who is a founder of the ABC and currently working as an electrochemist for the CSIRO. The 77-year-old is regarded as a kind of living legend in the lead industry. He firstly launched a study institution for lead after his graduation from Cambridge, moving to Australia with his wife 50 years ago and has been based in Australia since then.

ULTRA Battery made by the Furukawa Battery company, who delivered a speech at the ABC this year, was invented by him for which he possesses the patent.

 “ABC was started in Australia by three of us and it has become larger in scale year by year. We have been organising ABC in many different countries but not in Japan yet. It is always not easy to confirm the venue as the event is now very big and therefore the cost for the venue is also expensive. But every time we have new comers (for example Ethiopia and Yemen participated for the first time this year) and we want to continue its growth and the expansion of participants”.

There were numerous new topics discussed relating to secondary lead and lead-acid batteries at the ISLC and ABC this year. This resulted in many participants from all over the world and especially those from Europe, India, China, the Middle East and Africa drawing our attention. The slight downside was the lack of participants from Japan, considering Japan is a country that has been greatly involved in and contributed to the lead industry, from its development to the refinement of lead-acid batteries.

（IRuniverse Ohtake）

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