Duracell's name means durable cell, and its roots lie in military mercury batteries
The copper-topped battery in your remote began with a 1920s partnership between a scientist and a businessman who made mercury cells for military equipment. After passing through Kraft, Gillette and Procter and Gamble, the company ended up owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in an unusual share swap.
Samuel Ruben, a scientist, and Philip Rogers Mallory, a businessman, met in the 1920s and built the P. R. Mallory Company, which moved from Massachusetts to Indianapolis in 1924. Its mercury batteries for military gear outperformed the carbon-zinc cells then used almost everywhere. In 1956 Mallory bought General Dry Batteries of Cleveland, then the third-largest American maker of zinc-carbon cells, which had built mercury batteries under Mallory's licence during and after the Second World War.
The Duracell brand, short for durable cell, appeared in the 1960s, and batteries carried the Mallory name as well until 1980. A long chain of owners followed. Dart Industries bought Mallory in 1978 and merged with Kraft in 1980; Kohlberg Kravis Roberts acquired Duracell in 1988 and floated it the next year; Gillette paid 7 billion dollars for it in 1996; and Procter and Gamble inherited it when it bought Gillette for 57 billion in 2005.
When P&G decided to shed the business, Berkshire Hathaway offered its P&G shares, worth 4.7 billion dollars, in exchange. The deal closed on 29 February 2016, with P&G also putting 1.8 billion dollars of cash into Duracell. The company later moved its leadership to Chicago and in 2025 opened a research headquarters in Atlanta.
Alkaline cells, about 48 per cent of the world's primary battery market in 2025, remain the core, with Duracell competing mainly against Energizer and Panasonic. It makes the familiar AAA through D and 9-volt sizes, plus rarer ones such as AAAA and J, button cells for watches and hearing aids, rechargeables, and car batteries. It has also branched out, into wireless phone chargers through a joint venture with Powermat and, from 2022, lithium iron phosphate home energy storage for solar owners.
Source: Duracell
