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Lead

The automotive industry is the main user and an important source of Boliden’s lead. Lead is also used as a backup power supply where operational safety requirements are high, for example in hospitals.

A key driver 

Lead is a soft and malleable metal that withstands both oxygen and acids. It also has a high current-carrying capacity, which makes it enormously important for the automotive industry, where it is used in car batteries. Even today's electric cars require lead batteries for functions beyond the electric motor itself. It therefore continues to be an important metal in this industry. Lead has several properties that make it valuable. The metal protects, for example, against ionized radiation and X-rays, which has made manufacturers of medical equipment another important customer. 

Resources in circulation 

Lead is one of the most recycled metals and in Europe about 99% of all lead-acid batteries are recycled. Two-thirds of the lead we produce comes from recycled materials, mainly from used lead-acid batteries. At the Boliden Bergsöe smelter, over four million car batteries are recycled annually, with over 90% of the recycled material being reused in the battery industry to manufacture new batteries. The rest of the lead is produced at our Rönnskär smelter from concentrates from both internal and external mines.

50 ktonnes

Bergsöe recycles four million lead-acid batteries from the automotive industry every year. That means 50 ktonnes Pb/year.

Contact

Saga Mills
Manager Sales Lead and Precious Metals

[email protected]
NOTE: Boliden’s gold sales are strictly limited to companies.

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Links and documents

Our statement on our product CO2 footprint

The mining industry lacks a standardized measurement method for carbon dioxide emissions - we want to change that. We believe transparency is the only way to a sustainable and long-term mining and metals industry. We make the life-cycle assessments of our main metals from cradle to gate, without counting carbon credits and offsets. It improves our possibilities to see in which scope we need to make efforts to reduce our carbon dioxide footprint. In this way, we will achieve our vision of being the world's most climate-friendly and respected metal supplier in the world.

Boliden’s climate targets 

By updating the intensity targets to absolute targets for 2030, we have moved closer still to achieving our aim of being the industry benchmark. 

Learn more.

40%

Reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in Scope 1 and 2 by 2030, with 2021 as the base year.

Contact

Boliden Head Office

Boliden Group
Klarabergsviadukten 90
P.O. Box 44, SE-101 20 Stockholm 
Tel: + 46 8 610 15 00
Fax: + 46 8 654 80 90