Uniross Batteries has re-entered the South African industrial battery market after suspending this side of its business activities for five years to focus on the market for rechargeable batteries for consumer electronics. I met with managing director, Michael Rogers, and industrial director, Aaron Parkhouse, at the company’s Kyalami headquarters to learn why they are energised to be back in the industrial game.
But then, in a way, they have never really been out of it. Following the acquisition of the South African entity by the French Uniross group in 2003 and its subsequent exit from the industrial market in 2007, Parkhouse formed a separate business entity and effectively took over the company’s industrial battery clients.
When the decision was taken this year to again focus on the industrial market, Rogers was understandably eager to regain Parkhouse’s expertise and customer base. Uniross thus bought out Parkhouse’s operation and brought him back into the fold.
According to Parkhouse, this arrangement has proved beneficial to his efforts, particularly by providing access to the latest technological advances which the market is demanding: “Basically what is happening is the market is requiring more out of the batteries and demanding that they be smaller, lighter and last longer,” he says. “In order to achieve that our technology has to be advanced enough to, for example, perform monitoring inside the pack in order to maximise the efficiency of the battery.”
Consumer market success
As it turns out, the buyout of the local operation by the French group could not have come at a better time: “In 2003 the market for two-way radio batteries was waning with the rise of the cellphone, while at the same time the market for digital cameras was on the rise,” Rogers explains. “For these reasons, a couple of years after the acquisition a decision was taken at management level in France that we were going to opt out of the industrial market to focus our effort on the consumer business.”
The push into the consumer market bore fruit as Uniross (by its own estimation) has become the leading international supplier of rechargeable consumer batteries. Locally, the company’s growth was aided by the fact that it managed to secure listings with the likes of the Massmart group, the Joshua Doore group, Pick ‘n Pay and other major retailers.
Now, Rogers likes to believe that the South African subsidiary, with its strong legacy in industrial batteries, played a big part in inspiring the company to reconsider the industrial market: “From the South African point of view we pushed it hard because we know there is a market out there and we have not been out of it for too long so we have still got a very good reputation. It is not only going to be the South African subsidiary but all of our subsidiaries around the world will start venturing back into the industrial battery market.”
Picking up where it left off
According to Rogers, the move back into the industrial market could not be more seamless since the company still owns the necessary equipment. “There is also a lot of crossover from the technology side of the consumer products into the industrial,” he points out. “It really is just a different application and a different customer.”
Uniross is able, with immediate effect, to supply batteries to customer specifications in virtually any chemistry and for any conceivable industrial application including mining, water and electricity meters, manufacturing, security, defence, construction, vehicle tracking, medical, telecoms, marine, asset and personnel tracking, and POS payment terminals.
The company holds a large local stock of cells and has all the equipment required to assemble battery packs, including injection moulding, ultrasonic welding and spot welding machines. It can also integrate the required electronic circuitry for ‘fuel gauge’ monitoring, and has all the necessary electronic test equipment to ensure adherence to a customer’s specification.
This gives it the capacity to supply volumes from prototypes and small manufacturing runs, up to the single-digit thousands range per month, but when required volumes exceed the ten thousand mark it has a trick up its sleeve that sets it apart from other South African battery suppliers; namely a Chinese subsidiary.
As Rogers points out, this not only provides an advantage to Uniross’ business by 'keeping it in the family', it also benefits customers who thus only have to deal with one company regardless of their volume requirements, instead of searching the Internet for a Chinese supplier whose quality may or may not be up to standard.
Shocking fact: The South African Uniross opened in 1967, followed a year later by Uniross in France, but there was no business link between the two until the 2003 acquisition of the former by the latter. To this day, nobody has been able to explain how the entities came to share a name and a common market, other than sheer coincidence.
For more information contact Aaron Parkhouse, Uniross Batteries, +27 (0)11 466 1156, [email protected], www.uniross.co.za
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