Mumbai, Nov. 21: BPL Ltd today announced that its board will meet on Thursday to transfer its alkaline battery business to a joint venture company, fuelling speculations that the business will be taken over by the alliance it has with Sanyo.

In a notice sent to the stock exchanges, the company said its directors will consider a proposal for lease and/or transfer of alkaline battery business/undertaking to a 50:50 joint venture of the company “and to invest in the equity share capital of that joint venture company’’.

Unconfirmed reports said the alkaline battery business would be transferred to Sanyo-BPL Pvt Ltd, a 50:50 joint venture between the two companies. BPL officials were not available for comments. The senior management of BPL had said the joint venture has laid out a target of occupying the top slot in consumer durables and white goods over a period of five years while it was kicked off earlier this year. Sanyo now has a market share of around 6 per cent in the colour TV segment.

Interestingly, the announcement came on a day when Sanyo Corporation, a global leader in rechargeable batteries, launched ‘eneloop’, the world’s first ready-to-use rechargeable batteries, in Mumbai today. Sanyo chairman Tomoyo Nonaka, who is on a visit to India, launched the product. The product is positioned as the next-generation nickel metal hydride battery. It is the first offering from Sanyo under their new corporate vision, Think GAIA. Once charged, eneloop can be used repeatedly and once used up, it can be recycled.

According to Sanyo, eneloop has low self-discharge, thereby retaining up to 85 per cent of its charge even after one year and it is 4.5 times more powerful than the ordinary alkaline batteries. Moreover, it can also be recharged 1,000 times. Initially, eneloop will be available in the metros for Rs 450 in a set of two batteries.