Varta augmente sa capacité de production de batteries lithium-ion

Le groupe allemand Varta va augmenter ses capacités de production de batteries lithium-ion, pour dépasser plus de 80 millions de cellules par an en 2020, et plus de 100 millions de cellules l’année suivante. L’augmentation de la capacité nécessite un investissement supplémentaire d’environ 100 millions d’euros. Le groupe vise une part de marché d’environ 50% en 2020.

The Varta Group, the technology and innovation leader for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for high-tech consumer products, particularly true wireless premium headphones, is expanding its production capacities further, this time to above 80 million cells per year in 2020, and is planning additional expansion to well above 100 million cells per year in the following year. This is a consequence of continued high customer demand in a market that is growing by more than 30% annually. This very strong market growth is driven by the underlying trends towards miniaturization of application devices, increasing connectivity and wireless devices.

The capacity expansion requires an additional investment of around € 100 million (to manufacture an additional 40 million batteries per year). The group is targeting to attain the global market leadership for lithium-ion batteries with a market share of around 50% in 2020. The original plan had been to expand the production capacity from around 50 million batteries in 2019 to around 60 million batteries in 2020.

Herbert Schein, CEO of Varta: “We are at the start of an enormous boom from which we stand to greatly benefit. We are growing much faster than the market and, for this reason, we are expanding again our production capacities massively. As innovation leader, we have successful design-in projects with all leading premium headset manufacturers.”

Varta, as the parent company of the group, is active in the microbatteries and Power&Energy business segments through its subsidiaries Varta Microbattery and Varta Storage. Today, Varta Microbattery is already an innovation leader in the field of microbatteries, one of the market leaders for hearing aid batteries and is also striving for market leadership for lithium-ion batteries in the wearables sector, especially for hearables. Varta Storage focuses on intelligent energy solutions for tailor-made battery storage systems for OEM customers as well as on the design, system integration and assembly of stationary lithium-ion energy storage systems. With five production and manufacturing facilities in Europe and Asia as well as sales centers in Asia, Europe and the USA, the operating subsidiaries of the Varta Group are currently active in over 75 countries worldwide.