IKEA’s supplier contracts regularly come up for review, with an eye on lowering costs, if not squeezing (even long time) suppliers. The price drops touted with each new catalog have to come from somewhere.
A Billy bookcase or a set of Helmer drawers, to name two long-serving products, are not the same items they are today as they were ten, or even five years ago. Externally, they make look mostly similar, but the designs have changed, likely along with the supplier as well.
The BBC did a series on the company, and among the stories documented was how a long time supplier lost one product contract to a cheaper competitor, and the fight to replace that business with a different product and preserve the multi-generational family business and the jobs of its employees.
That’s the way business runs, and it’s not unique to IKEA.
‘Eneloop’ is now just a trade name owned by Panasonic and nothing more. Panasonic has marketed NiMH batteries sourced from their factory(ies) in China using ‘Eneloop,’ mostly for the Asian and Oceania markets.
I checked Ikea.ca but the description doesn’t indicate the country of origin. The first time I bought Ladda batteries was probably about 2-3 years ago. At that time the brown AAs were definitely marked made in China.
He will bring them back, and sent me 1 package. He will also check whether the white AA's are still the ones Made in Japan.
That could definitely be the case in certain countries, at least it's not a positive sign when the move away from the Japan made ones to the China made ones.
