Battery manufacturer Varta sales fell by 8 percent

German battery manufacturer Varta is launching the realignment of business. Global crises with rising energy and raw material prices, pandemic-related production interruptions on the customer side, low availability of semiconductors, and negative consumer developments continue to burden the company, Varta said in a recent statement.

In the first nine months of the 2022 financial year, the group's sales fell by 8 per cent compared to the same period in the previous year.  In response, the Varta board has launched a comprehensive package of measures to reduce costs and increase profitability and is working on far-reaching solution concepts.

The construction of the new factory for the round cell V4Drive for electric cars in the 21700 formats known from Tesla, among others, will only be continued after binding customer commitments. However, the operation of the first series production plant is to continue as planned and will provide the cells in the future to fulfil an existing contract with a premium car manufacturer. According to media reports, this is Porsche.

The current difficult economic situation is particularly affecting the demand for lithium-ion batteries in the button cell segment. The strategically important segment of "Household Batteries" with energy storage solutions and household batteries, on the other hand, has seen an increase in demand since the beginning of the global crisis and thus remains an important growth driver.

A few months ago, Varta announced that CEO Herbert Schein would come in the future to drive the business for the attractive markets of the E-Mobility and Batterypacks division in a separate company and would therefore leave the board of Varta AG at the end of the year. In this way, the company intends to address the fast-growing market of large-format lithium-ion cells for e-mobility and other applications in an even more targeted manner in the future by bundling them in V4Drive SE.

Herbert Schein will set up this business, which includes developing and producing cells for a wide range of attractive and high-growth applications, in new structures worldwide.