[ferro-alloys.com]North American shipments of original-equipment automotive lead batteries rose more than 21% in April year on year, Battery Council International data showed Thursday.

The data showed 2.093 million batteries were shipped in North America in April, compared with 1.724 million units shipped in the year-ago month, a 21.4% rise.

April's total also reflected an 8.4% month-on-month increase from 1.931 million units shipped in March of this year.

Cumulative totals in 2018 also showed an increase, with shipments from January through April totaling 7.610 million batteries, a 3.9% rise from 7.326 million batteries shipped in the same four-month period of 2017.

In contrast, volumes barely changed on a rolling 12-month basis, with 21.344 million OE batteries shipped between May 2017 and April 2018, compared with 21.257 million units shipped from May 2016 to April 2017, a 0.41% increase.

• [Editor:王可]