the battery market | France

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The batteries and accumulators are electrochemical generators used as power source or secondary in many devices, machines or vehicles. There are different types of batteries: batteries alkaline the batteries pimples the batteries rechargeable the batteries special and batteries saline .

More than a billion batteries are released each year, which represents more than 200,000 tons of equipment thus posing the problem of the waste recycling of batteries every year. In France, two eco-organizations are responsible for organizing the collection of batteries (COREPILE and SCRELEC) and have a few hundred members (including battery and accumulator manufacturers, importers and distributors).

In terms of regulatory since 2010, ademe requires manufacturers, importers and producers of this type of products to be declared via a National register of producers of batteries and accumulators in the context of the implementation of the decree of 18 November 2009. This decree is one of the implementing decrees of Decree 2009-1139 of 22 September 2009 on the placing on the market of batteries and accumulators and the disposal of spent batteries and accumulators, which transposes European Directive 2006/66/EC. This Registry therefore succeeded the former Battery and Accumulator Observatory. The objectives of the Register are to identify producers in France and to compile annual declarations by producers and processing operators: regulations require them to declare to the Register annually the quantities of batteries and accumulators placed on the market, collected and processed.

The competition is enormous because the ecological stakes are enormous, as is the effort in terms of research and development. In the perspective of a energy transition the future is for devices that use fewer batteries and more" portable batteries and accumulators ». The actors are therefore looking for the most reliable and cheap business model and technology. For several years, the trend has been towards replacement of portable batteries by some of the portable batteries in many types of equipment. This phenomenon is mainly related to the sale of electrical and electronic equipment with built-in batteries. On the other hand, the replacement of alkaline and saline batteries by batteries, commonly known as "rechargeable batteries", is taking longer.