Automotive and industrial battery major Exide Industries on Monday said it will look to increase the share of its international business. Exide is also bullish on the demand for lithium-ion batteries and expects the first phase of its greenfield cell manufacturing plant at Bengaluru to become operational by March 2025.

International business comprised 8 per cent of the company’s revenue mix in 2023-24, unchanged from 2022-23. The company hopes to increase this to around 20 per cent in the future and is working on a strategy to push exports.

“There were some headwinds in the international markets, impacted by the overall geopolitical conflicts which affected the export demand. But the company remained resilient to drive export growth,” said Avik Kumar Roy, MD and CEO, Exide Industries, responding to shareholders query at the company’s annual general meeting on Monday.

“We have launched new products, diversified the portfolio, homologated our products to meet new country requirements and this is how we are going ahead to increase our share of exports as a per centage of total sales,” Roy said.

The company is setting up a 12GWh (gigawatt hour) lithium-ion cell manufacturing plant at Bangalore, the first phase (6 GWh) of which is expected by March. “The construction of the greenfield lithium-ion cell manufacturing project in Bengaluru is going on in full swing and we expect phase 1 of the project to be completed by March end of 2025,” said Roy.

With the government announcing a policy in March to promote India as a manufacturing destination for electric vehicles, Exide is bullish about the prospects of lithium-ion battery demand.

“Two-wheeler OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) have already embarked on EV manufacturing and are expanding their production capacities. Major 4-wheeler OEMs are also planning large scale EV facilities which are projected to commence operations in the next 2-3 years. This translates into significant potential for lithium-ion batteries for mobility applications.

“On top of that there are some stationary applications like telecom, renewables. Our internal projections indicate a forthcoming demand surge in lithium-ion battery nearing 150 GWh by 2030. Around 70 per cent of the demand is expected from the mobility sector and remaining from the industrial sector,” Roy said.