Informist, Wednesday, Mar. 19, 2025

By Avishek Rakshit

KOLKATA – The country's largest battery maker, Eveready Industries India Ltd., will invest INR 1.8 billion to set up a new alkaline battery manufacturing unit in Jammu, most of which will be funded through external financing, sources with knowledge of the matter told Informist. Incidentally, it will be India's first alkaline dry cell plant as well.

Eveready currently imports alkaline batteries from third-party manufacturers and sells it under the Ultima Pro and Ultima brand names. While the company is majorly focussed on carbon zinc batteries, in which it is the market leader, Eveready currently has around 11% market share in the alkaline battery segment in the country. However, it has been losing significant sales opportunities to its competitor Duracell, which also sells similar batteries which are imported.

The new plant will mark Eveready's foray into the direct alkaline battery manufacturing segment. Sources said the company expects to commission the plant by the end of December this year

"The land in Jammu has been bought from internal accruals but setting up the plant involves additional cost which will be funded from bank loans and financing options. The ratio of internal finance vis-a-vis external financing is 25:75," one of the sources said.

Alkaline batteries roughly account for 8% of Eveready's revenues from battery sales, and the rest comes from zinc-carbon dry-cell batteries. Currently, Eveready has more than 53% market share in dry cell batteries and has six manufacturing units — Kolkata, West Bengal; Matia, Assam; Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh; Hardwar, Uttarakhand; Noida, Delhi-National Capital Region; and Maddur, Karnataka.

In August, Informist had exclusively reported that Eveready is considering a direct foray into the alkaline battery manufacturing segment and is scouting for land.

"The plant in Jammu will focus majorly on alkaline batteries, but there are plans to scale up the plant and extend the facility into a multi-product site for greater scale and cost advantages," one of the sources mentioned above said. Eveready expects an additional revenue inflow of at least INR 1 billion in the very first year of the Jammu plant's commissioning, which can potentially go up to INR 4 billion annually later, the source added.

According to sources, owned manufacturing of the growing market of alkaline batteries in the country could offer Eveready some cost benefits which could help it offer competitive pricing and subsequently lead to market share gains. Currently, Eveready pays 15?sic customs duty, 18% integrated goods and service tax, and 10% social welfare surcharge on imports of alkaline batteries. Domestic manufacturing will help the company particularly save on customs duty, which may reduce manufacturing costs, sources said.

Additionally, Eveready has also applied for incentives offered by the Centre as well as the state government to attract investments. "It is estimated that domestic manufacturing of alkaline batteries could help Eveready improve its margins by 8-10% for the product segment taking into consideration the savings on customs duty and the government incentives," one of the sources said.

Industry officials said that the total addressable market for alkaline batteries is around INR 30 billion, with the segment growing 25% every year. In India, around 350 million pieces of alkaline batteries are sold annually.

On Wednesday, shares of Eveready Industries ended 0.3% higher at INR 307.45 on the National Stock Exchange. End

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

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