Clarios to acquire Paragon battery and BMS unit
Clarios, the parent company of VARTA Automotive, is to buy the low voltage batteries and battery management system (BMS) business of German sensor maker Paragon.
The deal for an undisclosed sum will see Paragon’s power team added to the Clarios low voltage business.
“The low-voltage network is critical to the new user experiences, data collection methods and power system transformation underway in vehicles,” said Mark Wallace, CEO of Clarios. “Paragon’s team has the skills, culture and commitment to add new capabilities that will accelerate our partnership with key OE customers, especially around advanced Li-Ion programs.”
Paragon’s engineering team has projects with global OEM customers which will complement the Clarios team’s current low-voltage and lithium-ion programmes says the company. This will significantly increases Clarios’ engineering team that is dedicated to the development of new low-voltage architectures at the company.
Paragon, based in Delbrück, North Rhine-Westphalia, makes air-quality management, display systems and connectivity solutions and high-end acoustic systems. It has subsidiaries in Suhl (Thuringia), Landsberg am Lech and Nuremberg (Bavaria), St. Georgen (Baden-Württemberg), Limbach (Saarland) as well as in Kunshan (China), Bengaluru (India) and Oroslavje (Croatia).
The power group was responsible for €2m of the group’s €160m turnover in 2022, producing batteries for a motorcycle and a hypercar. However it had developed A and B samples of an on board battery for a mass market German automotive supplier and was waiting for a series order.
“The transition of the battery unit to Clarios together with a continued cooperation and supply agreement has now been concluded with Clarios,” said Paragon.
“The transaction will allow Clarios to integrate paragon’s lithium-ion battery technologies and a group of its engineering team into efforts to accelerate the development of new advanced low-voltage architectures for vehicles. paragon will continue to participate in Clarios’ success in the future by supplying the electronics for battery management for current business as well as potentially for future business. The agreement also creates the opportunity for future technology collaboration between paragon and Clarios as both companies play a role in supporting new vehicle technology,” it said.
This is part of a re-focus for the company, which sold its shares in high voltage battery subsidiary Voltabox AG in 2021 and in May 2023 it sold its Digital Assistance business unit to Cariad, the software company of the Volkswagen Group.
“Paragon’s team and capabilities strengthen our resources in Europe and globally as we develop a systems-based approach to low voltage networks,” said Federico Morales Zimmermann, vice president and GM, Global Customers, Products and Engineering at Clarios. “I’m confident our new colleagues will help us accelerate the electrification and digitalization of new vehicles, to create new user experiences, exploit and capture data, and to power new systems-based architectures.”
Clarios, which is a subsidiary of private equity group Brookfield Business Partners, says it will share additional information on how this acquisition fits with a long-term vision for low-voltage vehicle architecture during the IAA Mobility Conference in Munich next week.
Details of the transaction were not disclosed.
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