Kolkata, July 17 - The country's largest lead acid battery maker, Exide Industries, will invest around Rs.100 crore in 2009-10 on augmenting its capacity by 15 percent, a top company official said here Friday.

'The investment will go into our plants in Haldia and Hosur and 50 percent of the money will be spent on increasing our industrial battery output,' Exide managing director T.V. Ramanathan told reporters on the sidelines the company's annual general meeting.

Besides these two places, Exide also has production units at Shyamnagar near Kolkata, Chinchwad near Pune, Taloja near Mumbai and Bawal in Haryana.

Exide's manufactured 19.46 million storage battery units in 2008-09, against its capacity of 22.66 million units, according to its latest annual report.

The company plans to start manufacturing colloidal gel batteries at the company's Haldia unit by January, Ramanathan said.