NEWS
Monbat buys Italian recycler amid confidence in lead battery industry Bulgarian lead-acid battery maker Monbat bought Italian lead battery recycler Piombifera Italiana in September. Piombifera Italiana, the third largest recycling firm in Italy, will be incorporated into Monbat’s recycling subsidiary, Monbat Recycling. The purchase is the second major move in just over a month, with MonBat announcing its intention to buy a majority stake in the Tunisian lead battery manufacturer Assad on August 17. “The lead battery is still king,” director of corporate communications Vanya Babanin told Batteries International. “Sure, the lithiumbased solutions are going to make their place on the market but this is not expected to happen overnight. In the next 10 years, probably North America and Western Europe will have
sizeable fleets of electric cars — but it is not predictable today how significant their market share will be. “For Monbat the main focus is the after-market, so we expect the effect to be visible probably in 1520 years. As for the rest of the world, the time frame is much brighter. “This is why Monbat focuses on market presence in different continents including Africa and South Asia. Through diversification in recycling, new acquisitions and growth, we expect our EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) to reach €70 million ($82 million) by 2021.” Babanin said Monbat had a strong market presence in western Europe, and that supplementing this business with recycling would close the cycle and facilitate the
processing of scrap batteries. “Monbat is a vertically integrated business in the manufacturing and recycling of lead-acid batteries and this will remain our main scope of activities for the next few years,” said Babanin. “We have diversified our product range to lithiumion high power cells and batteries through our acquisitions in Germany (Gaia Akkumulatorenweke and EAS Germany, in July). “We strive to have a healthy balance in our activities with recycling, and the processed lead from recycling is used for both the in-house manufacturing and for selling to third parties, depending on the economic situation, seasonal dynamics and lead price on the LME.” The batteries for recycling
US lead battery usage in ESS falls, but upturn possible A GTM Research report in September says leadacid battery energy storage systems deployed in the US took up just 0.5% of the total amount of deployed storage in the country in the second quarter of the year. Although lithium-ion was by far the leading chemistry, it dipped slightly below 95% for the first time since Q3 2015, and vanadium redox flow batteries held 5% of the market share. It was the 11th consecutive quarter that lithiumion should dominate the energy storage market, holding 94.2%. And while most utility-scale projects used the newer chemistry, the behind-the-meter seg-
ment also favoured it, and the trend, according to the report, was expected to continue. Alistair Davidson, director for products and sustainability at the International Lead Association, said this trend was not set in stone. “There are a growing number of projects using lead batteries,” he said, including ALABC demonstration projects using lead batteries for frequency regulation and microgrids in Canada and the USA. “In addition, ALABC members have installed a number of projects all over the world in this sector, but more work is needed to communicate the benefits of lead batteries,
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as we believe that lead batteries provide an excellent option in renewable and utility energy storage applications.” “R&D work of ALABC and its member companies has highlighted the performance strengths of lead batteries in terms of improved shallow cycle performance, cycle life, calendar life and energy density,” said Davidson. UK company PowerVault is one example of an increasingly rare breed of firms that makes lead-acid storage systems, and has no plans to stop doing so, but it also makes lithium and has adapted its systems so that consumers can make the change themselves.
come from the Italian market, said Babanin, and Monbat’s membership of COBAT, Italy’s official recycling association for lead, entitles it to an annual quota of scrap batteries. “This is a logical decision for the economic group in the context of us striving to assure both sustainable economic growth and sustainable environment,” said Monbat CEO and chairman Atanas Bobokov. Separately, MonBat announced its intention to buy a majority stake in Tunisian lead storage battery manufacturer Assad on August 17. The final decision for the acquisition of the stake in Assad is expected by the end of November after due diligence has been carried out, MonBat said. Assad specializes in manufacturing, distributing and recycling lead storage batteries and has two production factories in Tunisia. MonBat operates four plants, which manufacture and recycle lead-acid batteries. The news comes a week after MonBat appointed Peter Bozadjiev as its new executive director. He was previously its chief financial director. Viktor Spiriev becomes CFO of MonBat Group. Both had previously worked together for PricewaterhouseCoopers, the international accountancy and advisory firm. Bozadjiev was also appointed general manager of Monbat Holding, the company that will deal with the two recent acquisitions of lithium-ion battery manufacturers Gaia Akkumulatorenweke and EAS Germany. MonBat is a subsidiary of Prista Oil Holding, a Bulgarian producer and trader of motor and industrial oils, greases and special fluids.
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