German battery maker Varta files insolvency applications | Hacker News Reader

German battery maker Varta files insolvency applications

reuters.com

> Varta lost its key customer in the spring: Apple plans to source the rechargeable "CoinPower" button cells for its AirPods headphones from China in the future.

It's another tough loss for German and European industry. Battery tech requires a lot of electricity and German energy prices are simply not competitive. And EU regulations limit how much the German government can subsidize industrial electricity costs.

Lots of debt, expensive labor, expensive energy, and EU Battery Regulation and limits on subsidies all adds up to just losing the business completely to China.

The assumption that Europeans can just absorb high energy prices is crazy. Ought to be a national imperative to invest in infrastructure to lower prices.

Lol. Depending on the country and who the buyer is, 50-80% of energy prices are taxes and levies. Those prices have nothing to do with missing infrastructure.

The problem there is the "national imperative" part imho. All EU politicians are hell-bent on ignoring any kind of market-based solutions, doing everything through regulations and picking winners. So there will never be a proper market equilibrium and therefore prices will always be higher than in places without all those regulatory interventions.

Investment won't help there in any way, because if that investment were worth it, it would already happen because of market forces. If it doesn't happen on its own, then the state (doesn't matter which level) has to do it, which means using tax money, which means that prices will rise. So that state investment will further skew the market equilibrium, putting the EU further behind.

I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say. There is currently a lot of demand for building out solar and wind in Germany. There is also large demand for building battery storage. The demand especially for the latter comes from the mismatch between supply and demand in electricity markets, so in a sense the battery operators hope to do arbitrage in a way that will also increase the efficiency of the market (by allowing the use of solar after dark).

This is very much a market-based solution. What the state has to do is provide permits and stuff for getting the batteries etc. actually built; which the state is doing but not as fast as it could right now. (at least in Germany)

It would be a market-based solution if the state wouldn't interfere with the markets in major ways. E.g. many battery projects in Germany are nonviable due to the fact that some less-efficient but cheaper battery technologies are verboten. Meaning the market gets screwed again. There are also fees and taxes on power transit that are set up in such a way that energy storage is disadvantaged compared to energy production, especially gas-based energy production. Hydro storage e.g. is comparable to gas peaker plants in the quickness of powering up/down, but hydro storage pays transmission fees twice, once to charge, once to discharge...

What battery technologies are banned??? While being good except for efficiency?

Also all the regulations are based on hardcore ideologies. EU truly wants to be carbon neutral and that is applaudable, but at what cost is the question. Does is make sense to decimate most of the energy heavy industries in the continent to be carbon neutral? I guess only time will tell.

You forgot the new US tarrif because of "forced labor"! At least in China things are much better on labor side!

Sorry couldn't resist....

It's all kind of ridiculous, that stuff.

I think it's a self made crisis. They turned off their atomic power plants in the middle of an energy crisis (even the current German government admitted that it was a mistake: https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germanys-merz-admits-...) and now importing far expensive natural gas from middle east and USA

Germany's use of gas has basically nothing to do with nuclear energy. It's used for gas peakers (which are for now and were needed, whether some % of electricity is provided by nuclear plants or not), heating (which has/had nothing to do with nuclear plants) and heavy industry like steel (which wouldn't be able to replace their gas usage any easier with nuclear than with renewables).

The current government is full of hardcore ideological incompetents captured by fossil fuel interests that wouldn't recognize a free market if it threw € bills in their face. Merz in particular can "admit" whatever he wants, it was an uninformed talking point to get a few points on media as a response to a small time-limited news wave on nuclear - nothing else to it. He's easily triggered.

The previous government extended the runtime of the shutdown-ready plants because of the energy crisis. Shutting off the last few hasn't had any significant impact on industrial energy prices https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/216044/indus...

You do know that the gap left by shutting off the nuclear power plants are now being filled by fossil fuel which makes the pricing quite volatile due to geo political situation in middle east. Also other not only Germans, but also other European countries had to pay a price as well for the shutdown of the power plant (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241220-sweden-sees-r...)

> The current government is full of hardcore ideological incompetents captured by fossil fuel interests

I could argue the same about the previous Green government, that it was an incompetent, eco terrorist extremist government where the shutdown of the power plants were spearheaded by an idiotic children book writer who has no idea about energy market.

I don't know that because it is utterly untrue, as is easily verified by looking up plenty of available data in the German electricity mix - it's replaced by the growth in renewables, fossil fuels have continuously shrunk https://strom-report.com/electricity-mix-germany/.

If you don't want to out yourself as a hardcore ideologue you should argue with data instead of political talking points.

Congratulations on picking up far right "children's book author" talking points! I'd say that is more of a worthwhile economic activity than whatever Merz has done in his life. If you can't recognize the self-serving ideology of Germany's "conservatives", I do have some perpetual micro-nuclear reactors to sell you.

The German government guy "admitting it was a mistake" hates wind turbines and claims they will all be replaced in a decade or two by nuclear fusion.

An absolute loon when it comes to energy. It is mind blowing that he is being touted as the voice of reason.

Not sure if that would happen in a decade or two, more like in five decades or so, but totally make sense. If we have fusion reactors, then why would anyone spend money on an inferior technology like wind turbine?

FTA - They lost Apple as their main customer. Apple is switching to Chinese battery manufactures.

It's not that bad, they still make money on consumer- and micro batteries. Needs a bit of restructuring.

Yeah, they make some of the best low-self-discharge rechargeables. All of my AA and AAAs are Varta. They're extremely prominent in lots of stores in Europe. When I read the headline, I was like, "But how?" but the Apple angle makes sense.

The sentiment seems to be that this is unique to Germany but is there any country that can rival China in manufacturing?

Definitely not the ones who spent the last two decades being anti-growth and high cost just to suddenly realize they do need to have their own domestic businesses.

Varta has moved (outsourced?) pretty much all consumer batteries we get in Australia to China.

I usually get the cheapest motorcycle battery I can find and Varta ones were always priced almost like the noname Chinese ones too.

Many can, they just choose not to. They balance the economy different instead of going all in on manufacturing and export. They don't suppress domestic consumption, have strong labor protection laws etc.

Let me rephrase you: “many could…“. Because if you don’t manufacture continuously you loose knowledge. It’s more than buying machinery and hiring labor. Manufacturing is continuous improvement process. Improving raw materials, manufacturing parameters, testing technology. When one stops it it’s game over.

Feeling heavy parallels with LLMs and software engineering...

> is there any country that can rival China in "Government subsidized" manufacturing?

FIFY

It’s not just government money. Factory workers wages in China are still a lot lower than western countries, and they have a lot fewer labor rights.

Also, the government hinders as often as it helps, since they can always take over an industry or make it’s CEO disappear if they feel like it.

The US does surprisingly well - output $2.9 tr vs $4.8 tr for China. More for high tech stuff like Boeing and Tesla.

https://www.engineering.com/u-s-manufacturing-hit-2-91t-valu...

There is "failing to compete with China" and then there is "hacking both of your feet off before the race even begins and being proud of it". The case of Germany falls squarely in the latter category.

I only encountered this brand when trying to buy batteries for old cameras. It would be a shame if some of those less common varieties were no longer available.

I find it regularly when buying car batteries (the regular 12V ones), and in fact I bought one for a friend just a couple weeks ago.

They're kinda popular at least around Europe.

edit: I just remembered when I worked on TV production some years ago, and they bought big boxes of the "Industrial" variety of AA cells for the wireless mics and in ears.

If this were a US company with better PR, I wonder if it would have read more like:

"Varta Boldy Undertakes Strategic Restructuring to Unlock Value and Sharpen Business Focus"

Much like OpenAI yesterday: “our safety container for model testing failed completely… we have to ban open weight models so that we can corner the market” - win-win for everyone, especially openAI

In a thread about Europe’s (lack of) competitiveness and you still manage to make fun of the US on something unrelated. You really need to work on your self reflection.

You need to work on asking clarifying questions and not assuming a meaning. You're embarrassing yourself.

Apple giveth, Apple taketh away.

Who's the Andy and who's the Bill in Apple now?

so sad to see Germany's fall right in front of our eyes.

As the brits would say, write off Germans at your own peril. They survived two world wars and still became the biggest economy in Europe, so time would tell if they would be able to turn the tide around for a 3rd time

Americans turned the tide with Marshall plan second time. There will be no third time. Germany gutted itself with: a) very inefficient federal administration system; b) insanely inefficient social system and c) uncontrolled immigration and d) writing laws accordingly car lobby group requirements. Car makers are dead. Well paid jobs gone. e) tragic demographics.

Indeed, plus miles behind in tech and seemingly doing everything to maintain that.

Although the government will invest in “startups” which meant that one defence (probably drones) related startup gets 500M euros - eggs and baskets comes to mind.

Germany is in invest in defence and conscript the young mode currently. We know where that will lead.

Don't be alarmed. We couldn't invade Denmark if we tried.

Fall from what exactly?

As someone living here it’s still one of the most carefree and comfy countries I’ve lived in.

Rip German industry. Gerhard Schroeder was a good Chancellor.

Schroeder lobbied for Germany to remain dependent on Russian gas. Huge net negative in the long run.

My guess is OP was being sarcastic.

You can never know. People in Germany have wildly divergent takes on what would be good for the country right now and some things that are acceptable to say in mainstream circles seem batshit insane to me.

Isn't that freedom of speech?

Genuinely curious, what alternatives were there in the 2000s? Did dependency on Russian gas doom German manufacturing or did it provide it 20 additional years of artificial life support?

Nuclear. The Schroeder government initiated the German nuclear phase-out (which was later reverted and re-reverted by Merkel). But rumor has it that the nuclear phase-out wasn't only motivated by the greens being anti-nuke, but also by Schroeder being interested in pushing gas instead.

Btw., after his chancellorship, Schroeder got a post at the Russian state gas supplier Gazprom.

Germany's gas problem wasn't purely about energy, but the availability of feedstock to produce chemicals.

Natural gas, being 90% methane, is a valuable source of hydrogen.

That's just the energy part of it, German heavy industry needs petroleum-derived products as raw materials.

His direct involvement with the Russian oil and gas sector (and, most likely, influence on their behalf) is a lot more recent than just 'the 2000s' [0][1].

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/ex-german-chancellor-sc...

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Rosneft

The alternative was to aggressively pursue nuclear power.

Diversifying just a little bit would go a long way.

When Russia invaded Ukraine suddenly several LNG terminals gained regulatory approval, even though previously those projects were in bureaucratic purgatory for years.

At the time it was a perfectly rational decision that followed the liberal foreign policy dogma of the time, which advocated that we tie up unstable countries with economic trade, so they become less incentivized to create havoc. Let's please not rewrite history.

*Giving "unstable" countries leverage over your economic trade

FIFY

In the context of the times it was the aim of Europe to integrate Russia into the EU zone.

Who gave Russia all that money to convert to capitalism after the fall of the wall? The US. Who wanted Russia to become a capitalistic nation? The west.

That it failed is in whose interest? And who is scared of Chinese influence? And who outsourced all their manufacturing to China?

Sometimes context does matter.

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