February 10, 2022: It is with sadness that Batteries International has learnt that Alex Fowlis, manufacturing director for Chloride Exide Botswana in Africa until his retirement in 2019, died in December. He was close to his 81st birthday.

Fowlis, who had been based in Gaborone in Botswana for some 20 years, had had extensive experience in the battery industry across Africa.

Working with the parent group Chloride, the British firm that was once one of the huge names in the international battery industry,  he spent most of his life in Africa including time in what is now Zimbabwe,  as well as for Chloride in New Zealand.

His colleague Rob Harris, engineering director, at Chloride in Botswana, said he was one of a last generation of all-round battery engineers. “He should have been called ‘Mr Battery’,” he said. “He knew everything there was to know about battery manufacturing.”

Another colleague wrote: “Alex had an immense sense of humour blended with an insightful mind, so conversing with him was nothing but a unique experience. His delicately expressed discourses shall be hugely missed.”