Godrej & Boyce plans foray into storage batteries, thermo chips, recycled concrete

Locks-to-aerospace engineering and manufacturing giant, Godrej & Boyce (G&B) plans to manufacture zinc-manganese batteries for large scale power storage as part of the expansion of its 14-businesses portfolio. It is also considering manifacturing of thermo chips for camera and virtual reality devices. The company has set up a pilot factory for the concrete recycling for using it in new constructions. 

Jamshyd Godrej, chairman, G&B said the chemistry of zinc and manganese has a lot of scope and it is an ideal solution for large scale energy storage. The batteries can be connected to solar grids for storing power for round the clock electricity. 

We have been using lead-acid batteries for a longtime, he told Fortune India. Lead-acid batteries have a low amount of usable energy compared to the stored energy. It can only go up to 1000 full discharge cycles. 

"The materials used in zinc-manganese batteries are sustainable and readily available in the market. We are doing research and development and set up a pilot plant," said Godrej. Zinc-manganese batteries are favourable choice for large-scale energy storage because they are low-cost, reliable, and have a long lifecycle.

"The manufacturing will start after we prove that the batteries can work in Indian conditions. It will take a few years to start the commercial production," Godrej said. 

The company has also launched another start-up for manufacturing thermo chips. The biggest application of Thermo chips is in optoelectronic devices, which can detect, generate, and control light. It will be essentially used in cameras and virtual reality devices for controlling the heating that affect the resolution of imagee/visuals. 

G&B has also set up a factory for recycling the used concrete from broken buildings and roads to generate new concrete. Construction and demolition waste is bulky and  end up usually in water bodies, public spaces, and green areas. Recycling concrete wastes can also reduce the need for mining natural resources. 

The Indian building code controls and limits the use of recycled concrete aggregate in the new constructions. However, it is used in new constructions in the developed countries. 

The 127-year-old group has 1.1 billion customers and has 60% of revenue coming from B2C businesses like appliances, furniture and locks. Net profit of G&B increased to Rs 79.72 crore in the quarter ended September 2024 from Rs 2.23 crore in the same period last year. Sales rose 16.91% to Rs 4051.73 crore.

Godrej said that the group has no immediate requirement of public capital for which the privately held company needs to go for IPO.