Lead dropped $130 or 7.9% to $1,510 a ton.  After 5 years of deficits the market will show a supply surplus of 49,000 tons.  Standard Bank expects an average lead price of $1,890 a ton in 2009 and $1,740 a ton in 2010.

Lead is mostly used in car batteries and “current forecasts suggest there will be no recovery in the U.S. auto industry until 2010,” Standard Bank said.

“I don’t see an increase in demand for lead this year or next,” Jim Grubbs, vice president of sales and marketing at St. Louis-based Doe Run Resources Inc., said yesterday from London. “We do not see a crushing fall in demand in our markets in the U.S. either.”

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