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Exide to suspend submarine battery production at Haldia

Santanu Sanyal

CALCUTTA, Nov. 1

EXIDE Industries Ltd has decided to suspend the production of submarine batteries at its Haldia factory. The batteries will now be produced at the Kanjurmarg plant near Mumbai.

The Kanjurmarg plant belonged to Standard Batteries Ltd, whose four plants located in different parts of the country were bought over by Exide in February 1998.

Exide's Haldia factory has been producing submarine batteries since the mid-1980s.

Standard Batteries too has been producing submarine batteries at its Kanjurmarg plant, but of mostly smaller types -- Type I and Type III. The Haldia factory manufactures Type II, which is larger and costlier.

The Kanjurmarg plant will produce all the three types of submarine batteries, while the Haldia factory will continue to produce automotive batteries for four-wheelers.

The suspension of production of submarine batteries at Haldia is part of the much larger operational restructuring under way in Exide.

For example, the Hosur factory will stop producing motorcycle batteries and concentrate only on four-wheeler batteries and industrial batteries.

The Ahmednagar plant, earlier belonging to Standard Batteries and producing only hard rubber batteries, will now take up the manufacture of motorcycle batteries along with the Chinchwad factory near Pune.

The Guindy factory in Chennai, which produces batteries for mines safety lamps, will also start producing industrial batteries and batteries for solar lanterns. The Taloja factory, also earlier belonging to Standard Batteries, will now cater mainly to th e export markets. The capacity of the Taloja factory has been stepped up from 3,50,000 to 6,00,000 per annum.

Meanwhile, the Exide management has decided to defer nearly by one year the commissioning of the Bawal factory located on the Delhi-Jaipur road. The factory, with a capacity of 1 million automotive batteries, was supposed to start production from the mid dle of June 2001. The production, it is now learnt, may not start before the middle of 2002 in view of the sluggish demand for batteries.

The facility created at Bawal factory, however, will be used to charge the batteries which the company supplies in the northern region, particularly to major buyers such as Maruti and Escorts. About 25,000 four-wheeler batteries are supplied to these veh icle manufacturers every month.