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Demand For Batteries Is Shrinking, Yet Prices Keep On Going and Going ... Up (wsj.com)
schwit1 shares a report: Batteries on average cost 8.2% more than a year ago, while prices in the overall household-care segment rose only 1.8%, according to Nielsen. At a time when prices are stagnating on everything from toilet paper to diapers, such pricing power for a product that is increasingly obsolete has confounded shoppers [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. "As far as the prices go, you don't have a choice," said Samuel Hurly, a contractor from Mount Vernon, N.Y., as he scanned a Home Depot display of AAA batteries to power flashlights he uses on the job. Batteries ordered online take too long to arrive, Mr. Hurly said, and he finds cheaper, private-label options lose power too quickly.
Battery prices were more likely to fluctuate a few years ago, when Duracell was owned by consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble Co. and Energizer was part of Edgewell Personal Care Co. Those companies were more focused on their bigger, more profitable razor businesses -- Edgewell with Schick and P&G with Gillette. They would invest less in batteries, or slash prices to drive up volume, to compensate for weak sales in other units, said SunTrust analyst Bill Chappell. Energizer Holdings Inc. spun off from Edgewell in 2015, and Duracell broke apart from P&G a year later when it was acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. schwit1 asks, "Both businesses have become more profit-focused since separating from their previous owners. Is the Energizer/Duracell duopoly ripe for disruption?"
Battery prices were more likely to fluctuate a few years ago, when Duracell was owned by consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble Co. and Energizer was part of Edgewell Personal Care Co. Those companies were more focused on their bigger, more profitable razor businesses -- Edgewell with Schick and P&G with Gillette. They would invest less in batteries, or slash prices to drive up volume, to compensate for weak sales in other units, said SunTrust analyst Bill Chappell. Energizer Holdings Inc. spun off from Edgewell in 2015, and Duracell broke apart from P&G a year later when it was acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. schwit1 asks, "Both businesses have become more profit-focused since separating from their previous owners. Is the Energizer/Duracell duopoly ripe for disruption?"
And not environmentally friendly to have disposable batteries with plastics and electrolyte compounds tossed into landfills.
Time to ban disposable batteries and introduce LiON chemistry replacement cartridges for these old AA and AAA cells.
Nobody should be buying any batteries that aren't Eneloop rechargeables. They come charged, do not self discharge appreciably, and perform better than alkalines in most situations. Once you have a set you can keep using and recharging them for many years. I have decade old Eneloops that still work great.
Sanyo (later Panasonic) solved the rechargeable battery problem completely.
Battery markups are not measured in percent, but multiples... 10X markup is not uncommon.
Demand for batteries is likely going up, driven by electric cars, computers, phones, etc. What's going down is demand for STANDARD batteries. Many devices have proprietary batteries of all different sizes, often inaccessible to the user.
Thing is, there's no good reason for it other than planned obsolescence. Take smartphones. Almost all of them use 3.7V LiIon batteries. Most of them are about 5 to 6 inches diagonally, with a specific height/width ratio. Time for an industry standard for swappable smartphone batteries. Imagine if you could just buy a battery at 7-11, pop the door, and swap it in when your phone's battery dies. Or maybe have a few different sizes, depending on screen size. Call then X, Y, and Z.
But no, this will never happen because throwing things away is a big profit center for sellers of e-trinkets.
I feel the exact opposite - I love AA devices. I want batteries to be replaceable and standard. I have rechargeable AA's. The batteries are obviously user-replacable. I can keep a bunch of them charged for quick swaps. I don't need to figure out which device needed to be charged, I just put the AAs in the charger from wherever they came from. I don't need to move the devices to near an outlet to charge them. And, in an emergency, I can just get a bunch of non-rechargable AAs from the store to run devices.
I'm not sure that's really true. While the number of rechargable devices has exploded, most of those are things are replacing power cords, not AAs.
Your ad here. Ask me how!