Exide Raises Battery Prices

Exide Technologies has announced it plans to increase prices for all batteries sold by its GNB Industrial Energy business in North America to offset the continued rise in the commodity prices. The price increase will be effective for all orders on or after March 1, 2006.

The increase will be approximately five percent for network power applications and eight percent for motive power. “The significant cost increases that we are seeing for raw materials and energy used in the production and distribution of our batteries requires that we take this action so that we can continue to properly run our business and serve our customers,” said Mitchell S. Bregman, President of Industrial Energy Americas. “The market price for lead alone has increased more than 25 percent since our price action announcement on December 1, 2005 from approximately $1,060 per metric tonne to more than $1,330 per metric tonne on the London Metal Exchange.”