September 27, 2024: It is with sadness Batteries International announces that battery veteran and popular industry figure Steve Gerts died suddenly on September 20, aged just 71.

Steve, a cosmopolitan American who spent most of his working life abroad, had been sales and marketing manager, Eastern Europe and North Africa, for separator firm ENTEK, for 24 years and almost 35 in the battery separator industry. He had retired from the business in July 2020.

Steve moved to France in his early 20s determined to become fully proficient in French. In 1973 he gained official recognition of this while studying at the Alliance Française. He then studied business management, government and intensive accounting in Paris with his French contemporaries.

From 1978 through to 1989 he worked in France and later across Europe for Johns-Manville de France finally ending up as European sales manager for its microfibre glass business.

Steve started in the battery industry in 1989, when he joined Lydall, a US manufacturer that makes, among many other things, separators. He rapidly became director of sales and marketing for the company’s Axohm Industries subsidiary, increasing the company’s market share of battery separators to 55%.

In 1996, he headed to ENTEK and with ever increasing volumes of sales under his belt rapidly became a mainstay of its overseas marketing and management. He stayed with the US firm in France for a while until transferring to its UK office in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 2008.

Steve later recalled: “I’ve been close to the industry for a long, long time. I was there at the very beginning of AGM separators, when they were starting to take off,” he says. “That experience gave me exposure to the battery world, as from there I moved on to other types of separators.”

On his retirement Steve said: “I don’t miss the responsibility of my job and my function, but I miss the friends and the marketplace.”

Steve was a well-known and popular figure both in his commercial life and also his private one. In Newcastle-upon-Tyne he had a reputation in the clubs and bars of the city as a singer and guitarist.

Batteries International has received many tributes to Steve’s kindness and decency. “I was fortunate enough to know Steve during his time at ENTEK and on occasions I would travel with him to conferences and customer visits.  He had an infectious positivity on life and was always great company during our trips,” says Steve Barnes, managing director of Hammond UK. 

“Customers and friends from the industry were always genuinely happy to see him, they recognised his sincerity and honesty.  What you saw is what you got — a kind, warm and generous man always who was always smiling.

“He will be greatly missed by those who were lucky enough to have known him.”