Inter-granular corrosion cracking in the anode grid is the main factor limiting the operating life of lead-acid batteries which occupy 60%-70% share in the secondary battery market. In the current approach, a specific processing of cold rolling followed by annealing is used to increase the content of special grain boundaries from 20% (conventional processing) to around 80% in a Pb-Ca based alloy which is applied to make anode grid of lead-acid batteries. By this way, the resistance of the Pb-Ca based alloy to inter-granular corrosion is enhanced by two and four folds compared with that of conventional recrystallization and cast states, respectively. It is estimated that when such Pb-Ca based alloy is used to make the anode grid, the operating life of the lead-acid battery will be enhanced by 4-5 folds.