China has closed a raft of battery factories in the south of the country, as provincial officials are coming under pressure to show they are acting on recent lead poisoning scandals.

Xu Hong, head of the lead acid storage battery branch of the China Electrical Equipment Industry Association, told the Financial Times most battery plants in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian, Henan and Sichuan had been closed down following a central government order to root out heavy metal pollution problems in the sector. She expects prices of lead acid storage batteries – rechargeable units used in a broad range of products including mobile phones, electric bikes and cars – to soar if the closures last three months or longer.

Checks with battery factories in several provinces and their customers suggest that the crackdown is so far being carried out most thoroughly in Zhejiang, where more than 300 people, including 99 children, were found to have been poisoned by a lead battery plant earlier this month.