Sprites - shaders breaking batching.. is there a definitive answer?

Hi guys - I’ve seen a few threads about this, been searching around the forum/google but have yet to find a definitive answer to whether it is possible to add a shader to a sprite and not break batching.

I have managed to get sprites batching using TexturePacker to atlas the sprites. As soon as this material is added with a shader attached (am using diffuse sprite shader) and there is lighting in range of the sprites, batching disappears. Is there actually a way round this or is it simply not supported in Unity?

I’ve seen articles about meshcombining and a combiningwithchildren script for multiple objects to share the same material however from what I see this is not applicable to sprites.

Thanks guys, appreciate any help!

Bump.