Panasonic Carbon India Co Ltd, formerly Indo Matsushita Carbon India, intends to enter the lead acid battery market for the industrial and automotive sector.
R.S. Kumar, Managing Director, said Panasonic intends investing Rs 100 crore to set up this business from scratch at its existing factory in Tada, Andhra Pradesh. Panasonic Corp has several lead acid manufacturing plants in China and will use that expertise in India. Panasonic Carbon will only manufacture the batteries and the marketing will be handled by other Panasonic affiliates which operate in the durables space, said Kumar. It has undertaken a study of the market.
The Rs 13,000-crore lead acid battery market has been growing in double digits, powered by the rapid growth of the automobile sector. Industrial batteries is a Rs 4,800-crore market and automotive batteries constitute a Rs 8,200-crore market annually. Kumar said the growth of industrial batteries has been driven by the inverter and UPS markets and there is a shortage in supply. Panasonic, he said, already imports and supplies lead acid batteries as an OEM supplier to Maruti Suzuki as well as to UPS maker, the erstwhile Numeric Power (now owned by Legrand).
Panasonic Carbon is the only maker of carbon rods in the country and supplies both to battery maker, Panasonic Energy, a group company, (which earlier produced the Novino brand of batteries) and to several other players such as Nippo. It also makes large-sized carbon rods for railway signalling equipment. This year it expects to produce 2,400 million carbon rods. “This year, the battery market will see a slowdown because of poor rains. Rural markets form a big chunk of battery sales, which go into gadgets such as TV remotes to toys and torches.”
The dry battery market is around 2,200 million in sales a year. But, there’s huge headroom for growth, said Kumar. The per capita consumption in India is just two per year; in China it is five to six batteries.
In June, Panasonic Corp, which held a nearly 30 per cent stake in Nippo Batteries Co Ltd, exited from the joint venture by selling its stake to the Indian promoter of the company, P. Dwaraknath Reddy. In a concurrent deal, Panasonic bought out Reddy’s 12.55 per cent stake in Panasonic Carbon India Co Ltd.