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About Panasonic

Voluntary Exchange of Mobile Phone Battery Packs

In August 2007, Panasonic announced a voluntary exchange of mobile phone battery packs in response to a quality problem, then in September of the same year, there was a fire in the lithium-ion battery factory of Matsushita Battery Industrial Co.,Ltd (now Energy Company). Panasonic would like to apologize again for the inconvenience and concern that we caused our customers and society at large.

As a result of these two serious incidents, Matsushita Battery Industrial is taking action to thoroughly review its production processes and to strengthen management.

The BL-5C battery packs produced between December 2005 and November 2006 by Matsushita Battery Industrial for use in Nokia phones would become hot and expand during charging, and the battery could potentially become dislodged from the phone itself. Thus, we initiated voluntary exchange of 46,000,000 units globally. This quality problem has several overlapping causes, including materials and manufacturing process.

Panasonic established the Corporate Lithium-ion Battery Customer Support & Management Division and took other actions group-wide to initiate a quick voluntary exchange of batteries globally and ensure that our customers can use safe and worry-free products.

Then, on September 30, 2007, Matsushita Battery Industrial experienced a fire in its lithium-ion battery plant, located at the headquarters complex, causing a great deal of trouble to many people, including our neighbors, customers, and trading partners.

As a result, the Corporate Lithium-ion Battery Customer Support & Management Division was restructured to respond to both the battery recall and the fire and get production restarted, while taking action to prevent these incidents from occurring again.

Production of lithium-ion batteries to be delivered to our customers was moved to Wakayama Prefecture or China. And the affected factory was brought back online in stages starting in November 2007, and by March 2008, it was restored to its pre-fire condition. In May, a new building was added to the Wakayama Factory, and similar actions will be taken to continue and strengthen our production system.

Factory safety is important, and our basic approach to fire is to protect human life first, try to extinguish the fire early, and prevent it from spreading. We are working to ensure that a fire does not occur again by implementing a multifaceted safety policy, increasing and improving our fire fighting equipment, reviewing our fire preparedness system, and improving training.

On-site safety inspection at Matsushita Battery Industrial

To coordinate the replacement of lithium-ion batteries in Japan, the Voluntary Replacement Promotional Council for Portable Device-use Lithium-ion Batteries was established with 22 member companies, including battery makers, device makers, and communications carriers, and Matsushita Battery Industrial is serving a leading role.

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