Incorporated on 20 Jun.'45 and promoted by the Williamson Magor group, Standard Batteries (SBL) manufactures lead storage batteries for automotive, industrial, and submarine applications and for miners caplamps. The company is the leading supplier of submarine batteries to the Indian Navy and it also supplies miner's caplamps to the mining industry. SBL has three manufacturing units, at Vakola and Kanjur Marg, both in Bombay, and at Guindy, Madras. The company has technical collaborations with Furukawa Battery Company, Japan; Oldham, France; Oldham Batteries, UK; and Hagen Batterie, Germany. SBL launched the Standard Furukawa automotive battery in collaboration with Furukawa. The company supplies original equipment (OE) to automotive and tractor manufacturers and Maruti Udyog is among its leading clients. It supplies industrial batteries to multinational telecom companies like Ericsson, Alcatel, AT&T and Siemens. To improve quality and productivity, SBL is relocating its present Vakola plant to Taloja by installing machinery in a single large shed separately for automotive and industrial batteries. In 1998-99, the Company sold its entire battery business to M/s Exide Industries Limited (EIL) effective from February 16, 1998.