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Themis Qi

China’s battery king Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) is enabling direct sales to smaller energy storage system makers via its own e-commerce platform, as competition with its domestic peers intensifies.
The platform, officially launched on Friday, would offer orders as small as three boxes of its energy storage products, according to a social media post by the firm.
CATL is currently the world’s largest producer of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage systems.
The platform, which allows small buyers to skip distributors, was being used by over 1,800 energy storage companies acquired during beta testing, the firm said in the post.
The battery giant also said that the small orders would qualify for a five-year quality warranty, the same as it provides for its larger purchasers, and that the delivery period would be within three to five days.
While energy storage continues to expand amid the global energy shock and an investment frenzy of artificial intelligence data centres, CATL was facing fiercer competition of late, said Lucas Zhang Liutong, director of Hong Kong-based consultancy WaterRock Energy Economics.
“[The e-commerce platform] is probably also to address the potential demand in distributed solar, to bundle with battery energy storage systems, from the residential and small commercial users,” said Zhang, as the spread of price hours driven by China’s power market reform was expected to increase the needs from smaller users.


Though the orders via the platform might be small, CATL could command a slightly better price due to its brand reputation, Zhang added.
Fujian province-based CATL, which is known for its higher-than-average pricing and bargaining power due to its product quality, has been focusing on large-volume energy storage orders across the globe.
However, CATL’s global market share in energy storage-use lithium-ion batteries slid to 27.1 per cent for the first half of the year, down from 30 per cent in 2025 and 38 per cent in 2024, data from Seoul-based SNE Research showed. Its domestic peers like Hithium and EVE Energy were catching up, while a megadeal in the Middle East was ultimately won by BYD and Sungrow Power Supply.
Meanwhile, demand for household battery energy storage is rising, a bright spot for CATL after claiming the global crown in grid and commercial segments.
The household market saw battery shipments surge 128 per cent year on year during the first half, the fastest among the three segments of grid, commercial and household, according to SNE.
In the same period, CATL’s net profit rose 42 per cent year on year to 43.28 billion yuan (US$6.43 billion), but the gross profit margins of EV battery and energy storage – the two largest revenue contributors – both narrowed to 20.63 per cent and 23.96 per cent respectively, levels that were not seen for CATL since 2023.


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CATL debuts e-commerce platform for direct sales to small buyers, as competition sharpens

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The platform allows for direct online sales to smaller energy storage buyers

The platform allows for direct online sales to smaller energy storage buyers