February 10, 2022: Romania’s Rombat announced two milestones on January 20 — record high sales of lead batteries and the largest amount of lead it has ever recycled and reintroduced into the manufacturing process.

Rombat, which is owned by South Africa-based automotive and energy storage group, Metair Investments, said it sold 2.65 million car batteries in 2021. This was a 15% increase over the previous year.

The battery maker also recovered around 13,000 tonnes of lead from batteries recycled at its Copșa Mică processing plant — where it annually recovers 98% of the lead from used batteries collected from the market.

Rombat CEO Alin Ioaneș (pictured) described 2021 as “both a year of records and challenges”.

In 2022, Rombat plans to increase its lead battery production capacity, while investing an estimated €4 million ($4.5 million) in a solar energy project to reduce the carbon footprint of the company’s production process.

Ioaneș said the company has already applied for funding from the European Union to support the solar project.

Meanwhile, Ioaneș said he wants to expand Rombat’s sales of lithium ion batteries to develop its position as a supplier to the energy storage market.

Ioaneș forecast that, over the next three-to-five years, “we will see a resettlement of the market with an obvious trend of growth in the area of ​​hybrid and electric vehicles.”

However, a Metair spokesperson told Batteries International the group was still going ahead with plans to switch the production of lithium batteries by Rombat in Romania to Metair’s Mutlu Akü lead battery subsidiary in Turkey.

Metair said last year its lithium products would benefit from “Mutlu’s brand strength and operational expertise, as well as its access and positioning within a growing market for lithium ion products and will benefit from recently available incentives that will recover the initial investment.