Banner achieves a new record with the highest sales

For Banner, the past financial year was characterised by far-reaching, global changes throughout the entire automotive industry, rising energy, raw material and personnel costs, and increasingly problematic supply chain issues. Nonetheless, the group was more than able to hold its own with another new sales revenue record of EUR 307 million and sales of 4.1 million units.

However, as Andreas Bawart, the Banner Group’s Commercial CEO, points out, “As an internationally active, serial product manufacturer, for us the massive cost increases in every area from raw materials to labour and naturally the meteoric upturn in energy prices, have all resulted in significant location drawbacks. Furthermore, a short-term improvement is not in sight and unfortunately the European Union, and thus also Austria, are contributing to these difficulties. A vast number of regulations have been introduced, the implementation of which has led a huge increase in the administrative burden upon small and medium-sized enterprises like ours. I find it inexplicable that our political representatives and officials accept this situation because as a result we are suffering enormous competitive disadvantages, which for a European producer in international competition, can very quickly result in being overtaken by the opposition from the Asian region.”  

Even so, Andreas Bawart goes on to explain that, “The group’s extremely positive development in the face of these testing conditions not only resulted from a challenging price transmission of the increased overheads, but equally decisively from innovativeness and the strong demand for our quality products across all countries and continents.”

The supply chains recover

Whilst due to the turbulence caused by factors such as a lack of semiconductors and wiring harnesses, the 2021/22 financial year saw the OE market segment decline and make a loss, improved supply assisted its partial recovery in 2022/23. At present, OEM business accounts for just under 30 per cent of Automotive business unit sales, while the remainder are generated in the aftermarket segment.

Sizeable investments in optimisation and innovation

In order to be able to adapt output capacities to rising sales, during the past three years over EUR 25 million have been invested in the development of the Leonding location. As Andreas Bawart stresses, “Our main focus has been and remains on the optimisation of order-related production, future-proof planning and logistics capacities, increasing production depths and, first and foremost, digitalisation and the permanent improvement of our processes.” The Banner Group spends around ten million euros annually on innovation and development work and currently employs a total of 785 people across Europe.

The extension of the Duracell licence is expected to bring market expansion in Europe

The premium Duracell automotive programme “Made by Banner” has been a success story for almost ten years and asAndreas Bawart emphasises, “Thanks to the combination of the world's best-known battery brand, which has the famous Duracell bunny as its advertising medium, with our know-how as a leading, quality manufacturer of starter and electrical system power supply batteries, we have been able to open up additional markets and target groups for Banner. To date, Banner Duracell batteries have been supplied to customers in more than 45 countries, who are primarily active in the automotive component and battery wholesale or retail trade. Continental Europe accounts for around 80 per cent of sales, while the Middle East and African regions contribute the remaining roughly 20 per cent. Our goal for the next few years is to further increase Duracell sales with a focus on Europe, where we still see major sales potential for the brand."

Sustainability with bull power

Immediately after the founding of the company in the1930’s, Banner already began to feed used batteries into an orderly recycling system. 99.9 per cent of the components contained in spent batteries are thus reused and valuable raw materials are returned to the production cycle. Indeed, with Banner as one of its founding members, since its inception 27 years ago the Starter Battery Environment Forum (UFS) has been able to collect and recycle around 21 million used vehicle batteries and thus around 225,000 t of lead from across Austria.

Andreas Bawart explains Banner’s comprehensively implemented sustainability strategy as follows,  “In our production process, we employ over 95 per cent recycled lead. The battery boxes we produce also consist of 80 per cent recycled polypropylene and the sulphuric acid collected from the spent batteries is processed into sodium sulphate, which in turn is utilised to manufacture detergents and glass.”  He also adds that, “We are continuing to work hard on the further optimisation of our ecological footprint." The enlargement of the PV plant in Leonding, which will provide an additional 1 MWp (megawatt peak: electrical output of solar cells), has already commenced and will become operational before the end of 2023. Moreover, the head office building is to be renovated. The façade will be redesigned and the roof insulated in order to reduce energy consumption to a minimum. A total of around three million euros is being spent and as Andreas Bawart underlines, "We see our investments as an important contribution to the energy transition and wish to continue to play an active role in shaping it.”

China as a future growth market

As part of its “Agenda 2030” strategy, the Banner Group is taking another significant expansion step and intends to significantly strengthen its presence in China, one of the world's largest sales markets. Banner is to achieve growth in the Chinese market by means of a licensing partnership with the battery manufacturer, LEOCH, whereby innovations for new areas of application are also to be jointly pursued. LEOCH is an internationally renowned, Chinese battery manufacturer and market leader that sells its products in over 100 countries around the world and has annual sales revenues in excess of USD 1.9 billion. In future, it will manufacture certain premium products in China under the Banner word-image brand and offer them on the domestic market. Andreas Bawart, “With this licensing partnership, we will be able to significantly enhance awareness of our brand in China.”

The future outlook

The current and future development trend amongst car manufacturers is clearly pointing in the direction of e-mobility. However, this does not mean that conventional lead-acid batteries have had their day. Andreas Bawart, “In my estimation, vehicles with combustion engines will continue to account for a significant share of the retrofitting market and in the long-distance truck segment there are currently no alternatives to the combustion engine. Here we also envisage future growth opportunities for starter and electrical system batteries."

These battery types will thus remain the key products of the Automotive business unit and supplementary shares of the aftermarket are to be captured. Andreas Bawart,  “We intend to further expand our current business areas and are planning additional growth of around 200,000 batteries,”

The group’s second cornerstone, the Energy Solutions business unit, is also developing according to plan. Excellent growth opportunities are forecast for the traction, semi-traction and standby product areas and the demand for energy storage solutions remains high. Commercial CEO, Andreas Bawart also has a positive outlook regarding the future: "We will intensify existing cooperations and open up new opportunities overseas and in Europe and Asia.”

Captions:

Photo 1: CEO Andreas and Thomas Bawart are securing the long-term future of the Banner Group through strategic realignment.

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