Varta AG

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VARTA AG

logo
legal form Corporation
ISIN DE000A0TGJ55
founding December 27, 1887
Seat Ellwangen , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management
Number of employees 2,857
sales 363 million euros (2019)
Branch Electrical engineering
Website www.varta-ag.com
As of December 31, 2019

Aerial view of Varta Microbattery in Ellwangen

Varta ( acronym for: V istribution, A ufladung, R Repa t ransportabler A kkumulatoren) is a traditional German battery group based in Baden-Württemberg Ellwangen . Next to it is VARTA also the brand name for products that are produced from currently or formerly belonging to the Group companies or distributed. This includes, for example, accumulators and batteries . Varta AG consists of the three subsidiaries Varta Microbattery , VARTA Consumer Batteries GmbH & Co. KGaA and Varta Storage GmbH. The brand name is used in the annual Varta hotel and restaurant guide .

The Swiss industrial group Montana Tech Components is a major shareholder in Varta (holds 58.15% of the shares as of April 29, 2020). The remaining 41.85% of the shares are in free float.

history

Creation of the AFA

The origin of Varta AG was the accumulator factory Tudor'schen Systems Büsche & Müller oHG , which was founded by Adolph Müller on December 27, 1887 in the Wehringhausen district of Hagen . He recognized the great market potential for accumulators at that time. In addition to Paul Büsche, several entrepreneurs and bankers from Hagen were involved as silent partners. In 1888 the company began the industrial production of stationary lead-acid batteries according to the design of Henri Owen Tudor , an engineer from Rosport (Luxembourg). Paul Büsche's share in the capital was taken over by engineer Paul Einbeck. Therefore, on January 1, 1889 , the company was changed to Accumulatoren-Fabrik Tudor'schen Systems Müller & Einbeck oHG . In order to avoid competition from the two electrical companies Siemens and AEG , which had also started production of lead-acid batteries, Adolph Müller sought to cooperate with them. After the negotiations were concluded, the company was converted into Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft (AFA) on January 1, 1890 , with the capital participation of the above-mentioned groups and with the participation of Deutsche Bank . As the first subsidiary of AFA, the Vienna General Representation was founded in 1890 with its own production facility.

In order to avoid any possible patent dispute, on April 4, 1890, the AFA acquired the license rights for Germany to the patent from Camille Alphonse Faure on lead oxides applied to the lead plates. The possession of this patent right unexpectedly enabled the AFA to take strategic measures on a larger scale. In the years 1890 to 1896 and beyond, the company brought patent infringement suits against its numerous German competitors, which were decided in favor of AFA. This enabled AFA to further strengthen its dominance in the market and expand its technical base.

The AFA was listed on the Berlin stock exchange from 1894 . In 1897 the AFA moved its head office to Berlin .

Early 20th century

In 1904, AFA acquired Watt Accumulatoren-Werke AG , which manufactured portable batteries at its Berlin-Oberschöneweide location . These were used for flashlights , telegraphs and signaling apparatus. The Oberschöneweide plant became the Group's second most important mainstay. The distributor of the work with the name Varta ( V istribution, A ufladung, R Repa t ransportabler A kkumulatoren) became famous. The grid plate developed by Watt-Werke became the starting point for the development of the starter battery for automobiles, which went into production from 1920.

The company grew rapidly at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1912, around 4,000 employees in the German Reich achieved a turnover of around 31.4 million marks . Numerous plants and subsidiaries were founded or taken over in Austria and abroad by 1914, namely in Austria (1890), Switzerland (1892), Russia (1897), Hungary (1904), Galicia (1906), Italy (1907), Bohemia (1909), Romania (1911) and Sweden (1914).

By 1904, AFA acquired much of the capital of The Tudor Accumulator Company Limited in England. In 1912 she signed a so-called "friendship contract" with the companies Société de l'Accumulateur Tudor (Paris) and Société Anonyme "Accumulateurs Tudor" (Brussels). This resulted in a considerable expansion of their scope.

In 1905, together with Siemens and AEG, the company for electric train lighting , abbreviated as GEZ , was established in Berlin. In 1913, the German Edison accumulator company DEAC, which had been founded in Berlin in 1905 to manufacture steel accumulators based on the Edison design , was taken over. At that time, the main factory in Hagen mainly produced large, fixed lead batteries. The first submarine battery was delivered as early as 1904 . During the First World War , production was increasingly adapted to the needs of the military. For example, the plant in Hagen was the only manufacturer of submarine batteries in the German Reich. Therefore, the British Admiralty planned air raids on the AFA plant in Hagen as early as the First World War.

After Germany's defeat at the end of the First World War, AFA lost its subsidiaries in England, Russia, Romania and Galicia. Thanks to high quality products, however, it was soon able to resume business in the civil sector.

Takeover by the industrial family Quandt

Former Varta premises in Hanover , in the 21st century Johnson Controls on the Mittelland Canal
Accumulatoren-Fabrik AG share for 100 Reichsmarks from November 1941

From 1922 the industrialist Günther Quandt used current economic fluctuations to systematically acquire shares in the AFA. The management of the AFA could not defend itself against these actions, which were perceived as a hostile takeover. After acquiring the majority of the shares, Quandt became chairman of the supervisory board of AFA on June 13, 1923, and chairman of the management board in 1938. Until the outbreak of the Second World War , the AFA became a significant part of the economic activities and industrial holdings of the Quandt family .

Further diversification between the two world wars

In 1926, AFA acquired Pertrix Chemische Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft, which was founded in Hamburg in 1922 . In the new Pertrix plant in niederschöneweide emerged dry cell batteries and flashlights. Among the products of this work, the anode batteries for radio receivers should be mentioned in particular . In 1927, AFA took over the mine lamp factory Dominit-Werke GmbH from Dortmund, which was founded in 1921 . In 1939 the corporate form of the Pertrix and Dominit-Werke changed , the stock corporations became limited liability companies ( GmbH ). Both companies remained subsidiaries of AFA.

From 1936 to 1938, the AFA built a new plant in Hanover-Stöcken, which manufactured accumulators for submarines and torpedoes exclusively for the Navy .

The AFA in the Third Reich

Many submarines of the Kriegsmarine in World War II were equipped with batteries from the AFA plant in Hanover-Stöcken .

Günther Quandt belonged to the elite of the German economy, which affirmed and actively supported Hitler's armaments policy. From 1931 he sympathized with the NSDAP , also through the mediation of Goebbels , who had married his ex-wife Magda Behrend . In 1937 Quandt was appointed military manager.

The AFA was the main supplier of propulsion batteries for submarines, mainly of the types VII , IX and XXI , torpedoes ( G 7e / G 7es ), as well as on- board batteries for the long-range rocket V2 .

In 1943 Quandt founded a large-scale production facility in Poznan . This work was characterized by its extremely rational floor plan, which reduced the amount of transport required to a strict minimum.

In the AFA factories in Hagen, Hanover-Stöcken , Posen and Vienna , during the Second World War, in addition to foreign forced laborers and prisoners of war , concentration camp prisoners were also used to safeguard the war-essential production : Hundreds of women imprisoned did forced labor in the Pertrix factory in Niederschöneweide. The AFA operations were one of the few places where concentration camp inmates came into contact with the civilian population. However, the safety and hygiene regulations applicable to the staff were not applied to the inmates. You were u. a. Exposure to toxic lead handling hazards , malnourished and exhausted.

In Hanover, the prisoners belonged to the satellite camp KZ sticks (Akkumulatorenwerke) of the Neuengamme concentration camp . The camp existed between July 1943 and April 1945 right next to the site of the accumulator factory. Around 400 of the average 1,500 prisoners died of poor living and working conditions as well as a death march to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945. Around 600 prisoners unable to march were transported to Gardelegen , where they were murdered in the Isenschnibber field barn .

Memorial for the slave laborers of the battery factory

As a reminder, a memorial with a sculpture and memorial plaques was set up in Hanover-Stöcken near the former camp in 1987. It is dedicated to the West and East European prisoners who were forced into war production under inhumane conditions. Under the influence of the then main shareholder, the Quandt family , Varta AG refused to have the memorial erected on the company property.

Günther Quandt strove to incorporate the Tudor plant in Florival near Wavre into his industrial empire. This work was under the direction of Léon Laval, the son-in-law of Henri Tudor . In 1942, Quandt enlisted the services of the Gestapo to force Laval to negotiate about AFA participation. Laval was adamant. He was imprisoned immediately in Luxembourg and later in Germany until the end of the war. The Florival plant was withheld from the AFA.

Towards the end of the war, the main plant in Hagen suffered severe damage from Allied air raids .

post war period

After the Second World War, the works in Berlin were expropriated; they were located in the Soviet sector of the city . Despite bomb damage and dismantling , batteries for forklifts and rail vehicles were again produced in Berlin-Oberschöneweide from 1946 onwards by the newly founded VEB Berliner Akkumulatoren- und Elementefabrik (BAE) . The former Pertrix factory in Berlin-Niederschöneweide produced flashlights and batteries under the name Batropa until 1999. In 1946, the AFA began manufacturing dry batteries in Ellwangen under the company name BMF - Batterie- und Metallwarenfabrik . For this purpose, the production facilities from Hanover and Ullersricht were merged in a former propeller hub factory . The Pertrix-Union in Ellwangen was created in 1949 from the companies BMF and Pertrix-Werke. In the period that followed, the production of zinc-carbon batteries in Ellwangen was gradually expanded - with cells in the mono and baby sizes, mass production began in the 1950s.

Renaming of AFA to Varta and relocation of the headquarters

Since the name VARTA continued to gain acceptance as a brand and quality term in the decades after the Second World War , the Group's general meeting in 1962 decided to rename AFA to Varta Aktiengesellschaft . In 1965, Varta moved its headquarters from Hagen to Frankfurt am Main . Since 1956 Varta has been supplying submarine batteries to the present German Navy and for export. The business with submarine batteries is the most profitable and is - as one of the few original production areas - continued by Hawker (the successor to Varta AG) at the main plant in Hagen.

In 1977 the old Varta AG was split up into Varta AG for batteries and plastics , CEAG for electronics and Altana for pharmaceutical products .

For decades, the company was active in various areas of battery manufacturing. Varta produced industrial and vehicle batteries , round and button cells at home and abroad . In 1993 Varta AG made no profit for the first time in its history. As a result of global competition and cost pressure, as well as encrusted structures, Varta is "in many ways a typical case for a German company in the mid-1990s," judged the Financial Times . As a result, a profound restructuring of the group began. In 1995 the industrial batteries division and with it the historical core business was sold to the British conglomerate BTR ( British Tire & Rubber Company ). At around the same time, the car battery business was brought into a joint venture with Robert Bosch GmbH . In 1998, in the course of a restructuring, the entire device battery activities were combined in the new Varta Gerätebatterie GmbH and Varta-Plastic was sold. This concludes the concentration on the device and car battery divisions and Varta AG becomes a pure group holding company . In 1999 the production of zinc-carbon batteries in Ellwangen was stopped.

Breaking up of the group

Johnson Controls company building in Hanover on the former Varta site

At the end of 2000, 92% of the shares were taken over for almost 300 million euros from a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank called DB Investor and passed on to Gopla GmbH , to which Deutsche Bank holds 39% and the two previous main shareholders from the Quandt family 25.1% were involved.

In 2001 the microbattery division was spun off, and the resulting Varta Microbattery became a subsidiary of Varta AG in Hanover.

In the summer of 2002, Varta's two largest work areas were sold. First, the majority stake in the field of portable batteries was given to the battery manufacturer Rayovac . A week later, the cooperation partner Johnson Controls bought the 80% Varta shares in VB Autobatterie GmbH with Robert Bosch GmbH for 312.5 million euros and thus the largest area. Varta had 1,700 employees and around 130 million euros in sales in the microbattery sector.

In 2004, the stake in Microlite, a Brazilian portable battery manufacturer, was sold to Rayovac. In July 2005, Spectrum Brands , as Rayovac now called itself , terminated the joint venture with Varta and took over the retail battery division completely. Thus, only the microbattery division remained with Varta. This was sold in February 2007 for a preliminary purchase price of around 30 million euros to the Austrian VEG Beteiligungsgesellschaft and Buy-Out Beteiligungs-Invest, both of which belong to the Global Equity Partners group, and finally at the end of 2007 to Montana Tech Components , which is also a Represents the participation of the Global Equity Partners group.

With the sale of all operational business areas, Varta said goodbye to the battery business after more than 100 years. Varta, based in Hanover, continues to exist and deals with the management of its own assets as well as the utilization and processing of assets, contracts, liabilities and participations of the company and its subsidiaries. The Varta relief fund and the real estate company Pertrix are located under the umbrella of Varta.

The Volkswagen AG in 2009 and Varta Microbattery formed a research collaboration to the development of lithium-ion batteries for electric cars drive. The company founded for this purpose bears the name VW-VM Forschungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG today .

New start and reorganization of the group

Varta AG was bought up in August 2011 by the same consortium of companies that had also taken over Varta Microbattery . After the takeover, Montana Tech Components brought its previously directly held subsidiaries Varta Microbattery GmbH and Varta Storage GmbH into Varta AG .

In November 2016, the group management announced another IPO, which was canceled at short notice on November 29, 2016. The IPO in the regulated market ( Prime Standard ) finally took place on October 19, 2017 . With an issue price of 17.50 euros, the group was valued at 668.5 million  euros . Varta AG is listed in the German Entrepreneurial Index , DAX International Mid100 and, since December 23, 2019, also in the MDAX .

In May 2019, VARTA AG announced that it would take over the area of ​​commercial batteries (household batteries) and chargers again, as Energizer had to give up Varta's European business by order of the EU antitrust authorities. The purchase includes the worldwide naming rights of the VARTA brand for commercial batteries and chargers as well as the operative business in the EMEA region . The former branches outside the region will remain with Energizer. Energizer will continue to use the VARTA brand for Asia and America via a license agreement. On January 2, 2020, Varta AG announced that the acquisition of the VARTA Consumer Batteries business from Energizer had been successfully completed.

As a result of the restructuring of the Varta holdings in the 2010s, Varta AG is today again the holding company for the entire VARTA Group. Since then, VARTA AG has been divided into VARTA Microbattery GmbH , VARTA Storage GmbH and, since 2020, VARTA Consumer Batteries GmbH & Co. KGaA as operational units and VW-VM Forschungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG as a cooperation with Volkswagen AG. The VARTA car batteries division will continue to be managed by Clarios Germany GmbH & Co KgaA , which was spun off from Johnson Controls Power Solutions in 2019 .

VARTA is pushing the further development of lithium-ion technology. With the help of IPCEI funding, in addition to the development of the latest generation of small-format lithium-ion cells with even higher energy densities, the focus of the funding program will be on transferring the innovative VARTA lithium-ion technology to larger formats. In the future, these battery cells could be used in energy storage systems, robots, but also in areas of mobility.

Products (selection)

  • Batteries and other Varta products

  • CoinPower lithium-ion button cell

  • Hearing aid batteries manufactured by VARTA

    Hearing aid batteries manufactured by Varta

  • Poliflex accumulator from Varta Microbattery

  • Accumulators

  • Lithium-ion accumulator

  • Zinc-carbon battery: mono cell in the design of the 1970s

  • Battery from Pertrix

  • Varta Pertrix 74, 15 volt battery

  • Varta Li-Mn button battery

  • Varta 9 volt battery

  • Mignon battery from Varta

  • LED flashlight

  • Varta combi charger with two Ni-Cd batteries (2100 mAh AA)

  • Varta Solar Charger Model 57082 with two 2100 mAh Ni-MH batteries

The Varta AG offers with the Varta Storage GmbH energy storage systems for domestic use and for the industry and counted in 2017 among the three largest providers of electricity storage systems for photovoltaic systems in private homes in the European market.

With a new silicon-dominated anode, Varta has increased the energy density of lithium-ion batteries and received the German innovation award in 2020 .

Trivia

It is worth mentioning that Varta has already provided batteries for space missions three times : first in the 1969 Neil Armstrong lunar mission , in the Galileo space probe and in the mission to the International Space Station that started in 2018 , Li-ion polymer batteries were sent to the ISS for a medical project .

literature

  • Ralf Blank : Hagen in the Second World War. Bomb warfare, armaments and everyday war life in a Westphalian city 1939–1945 , Essen 2008 (detailed description of AFA / Varta as an armaments company)
  • Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Angelika Königseder, The Place of Terror  : History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps, Vol . 5 Hinzert-Auschwitz-Neuengamme, CH Beck, Munich 2007
  • Oskar Clemens, 50 years of Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1938 , AFA, Berlin-Hagen-Vienna 1938
  • Rüdiger Jungbluth, The Quandts. Your quiet rise to the most powerful economic dynasty in Germany , Bastei-Lübbe Taschenbuch, vol. 61550, Bergisch Gladbach 2004
  • Gabriele Layer-Jung, Cord Pagenstecher, From the forgotten warehouse to the documentation center? The former Nazi forced labor camp in Berlin-Schoneweide, memorials circular no.111 , Berlin 2003
  • Burkhard Nadolny , Wilhelm Treue : Varta - a company of the Quandt Group. Verlag Mensch und Arbeit, Munich 1964 (commemorative publication for the 75th anniversary, which depicts the company's history)
  • Adolph Müller, 25 years with the Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1913 , AFA, Berlin 1913
  • Henri Werner, Ernest Reiter, Henri Owen Tudor. L'impact d'une idée, Les Amis du Musée Henri Tudor asbl, Rosport 2009, ISBN 978-99959-629-0-6 .
  • Henri Werner, Ernest Reiter, Henri Owen Tudor. An Idea… and Where it Led , Les Amis du Musée Henri Tudor asbl, Rosport 2012, ISBN 978-99959-629-1-3 .
  • Gijs Mom: The wooden board in the black box: The development of the electromobile battery at and from the perspective of the Accumulatorenfabrik AG (AFA) from 1902-1910 . In: Technikgeschichte, Vol. 63 (1996), H. 2, pp. 119–151.

Web links

Commons : Varta AG  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Varta AG: Imprint
  2. ↑ a b Annual Report 2019 (PDF; 8.4 MB) In: varta-ag.com. 2019, accessed April 1, 2020 .
  3. ↑ VARTA AG successfully completes acquisition of VARTA Consumer Batteries business from Energizer. January 2, 2020, accessed February 3, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Shareholder structure as of April 29, 2020. Retrieved July 20, 2020 .
  5. ^ Oskar Clemens: 50 years of Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1938 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin-Hagen-Vienna 1938, p. 50 .
  6. ↑ 50 years of the German accumulator industry . In: HELIOS Export Trade Journals of Electricity and Radio, Leipzig and Vienna, Volume 44, No. 21 of May 22, 1938, pp. 678-680
  7. ^ Adolph Müller: 25 years of the Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1913 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin 1913, p. 40-46 .
  8. ^ Oskar Clemens: 50 years of Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1938 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin-Hagen-Vienna 1938, p. 66-67 .
  9. ^ Adolph Müller: 25 years of the Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1913 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin 1913, p. 224 .
  10. ^ Adolph Müller: 25 years of the Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1913 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin 1913, p. 277-279 .
  11. ^ Henri Werner, Ernest Reiter: Henri Owen Tudor. L'impact d'une idée . Ed .: Les Amis du Musée Henri Tudor asbl. Rosport 2009, ISBN 978-99959-6290-6 , pp. 123-125, 153-161 .
  12. ^ Oskar Clemens: 50 years of Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1938 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin-Hagen-Vienna 1938, p. 70-71 .
  13. ^ Oskar Clemens: 50 years of Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1938 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin-Hagen-Vienna 1938, p. 97 .
  14. ^ Burkhard Nadolny, Wilhelm Treue: Varta - A company of the Quandt Group 1888–1963 , Verlag Mensch und Arbeit, Munich 1964.
  15. ↑ a b Rüdiger Jungbluth: The Quandts. Your quiet rise to the most powerful economic dynasty in Germany . tape 61550 . Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2004, p. 190-199 .
  16. ↑ Gabriele Layer-Jung, Cord Pagenstecher: From the forgotten warehouse to the documentation center? The former Nazi forced labor camp in Berlin-Schöneweide . In: Memorials circular . No. 111 . Berlin March 2003, p. 3-13 .
  17. ↑ Subcamp list. Retrieved May 20, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Angelika Königseder: The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. 5 Hinzert-Auschwitz-Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, p. 443-446 .
  19. ^ Henri Werner, Ernest Reiter: Henri Owen Tudor. L'impact d'une idée . Ed .: Les Amis du Musée Henri Tudor asbl. Rosport 2009, ISBN 978-99959-6290-6 , pp. 223 .
  20. ^ History. Part of a 130-year history of innovation and experience. In: www.varta-ag.com. Retrieved October 10, 2018 .
  21. ↑ a b Varta also sells the field of car batteries. Handelsblatt , August 2002, accessed October 8, 2016 .
  22. ↑ a b Volkswagen and Varta forge an alliance. (No longer available online.) In: auto-motor-und-sport.de. Auto Motor Sport, September 25, 2009, archived from the original on December 4, 2016 ; accessed on December 1, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.auto-motor-und-sport.de
  23. ↑ Commercial register details for VW-VM Forschungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG. In: online-handelsregister.de. Registeranzeiger GmbH, accessed on December 1, 2016 .
  24. ↑ Wirtschaftsblatt : Tojner Group takes control of the entire Varta AG ( Memento from September 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ↑ Varta: With power on the stock exchange. Retrieved March 28, 2019 .
  26. ↑ Varta postpones IPO. In: finanznachrichten.de. Finanznachrichten.de, November 29, 2016, accessed December 1, 2016 .
  27. ^ Varta AG - Company information , Frankfurt Stock Exchange, accessed on October 21, 2017.
  28. ↑ VARTA AG ends the offer period early and sets the issue price at 17.50 euros per share , press release from Varta AG on dgap.de, October 18, 2017.
  29. ↑ TeamViewer and Varta are promoted to MDAX. In: www.finanzen.net. Retrieved January 8, 2020 .
  30. ↑ VARTA SHARES News | A0TGJ5 news. Retrieved March 28, 2019 .
  31. ↑ "I love the EU" - Varta will buy back a piece of Varta. In: n-tv . May 29, 2019, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  32. ↑ 2019-05-29-VARTA-Consumer-Batteries. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
  33. ↑ VARTA AG successfully completes acquisition of VARTA Consumer Batteries business from Energizer on January 2nd, 2020. Accessed on January 4th, 2020 .
  34. ↑ a b Quarterly Report of Monthly TechComponets. (PDF) Retrieved November 9, 2016 .
  35. ↑ A world market leader from the province is supposed to save Germany's e-mobility. Retrieved July 1, 2020 .
  36. ^ Dpa, Nicole Wörner: Varta newcomer to the stock market: Lithium-ion batteries drive profit. Retrieved March 28, 2019 .
  37. ↑ Company website Varta-Storage GMBH , accessed on November 22, 2017
  38. ↑ EuPD Research: Sonnen, LG Chem and Varta lead the way in photovoltaic home storage systems in Europe. April 25, 2018. Retrieved March 28, 2019 .
  39. ↑ The award winners 2020 - The German Innovation Award. Retrieved April 21, 2020 .
  40. ↑ Press Release VARTA Microbattery GmbH (2003) GALILEO Space Project: Successful contribution of VARTA Microbattery GmbH
  41. ↑ Sandra Enkhardt: Varta sends high-performance battery into space ; PV-Magazine Germany, April 20, 2018.