Sanyo has announced plans to sell its environment-friendly next-generation nickel metal hydride battery "eneloop" on a trial basis in China.

Sanyo hopes to take this as a response to the Chinese government's call for building an environmentally friendly and energy-saving society and make contributions to China's environment undertaking.

The selling of eneloop began on January 20 in Beijing, Shanghai and Fuzhou. Sanyo Electric Trade International Co., Ltd is responsible for the sale of the battery in Beijing and Shanghai, and Feimaotui Electronics Co., Ltd, a Fuzhou based battery packing and processing company, is responsible for the sale in Fuzhou. Sanya estimates that the unit sales of eneloop in the three cities will reach 150,000 each month.

Each battery can be used over 1000 times through repeated charges. Since it was launched in the autumn of 2005 in Japan, the battery has been sold in more than 60 countries across the world with a total sales of up to 40 million.