Britishvolt battery Gigafactory falls in to administration

Britishvolt, a UK startup planning a huge EV battery Gigafactory in North East England, collapses into administration.

As we roll inexorably into a future where all new cars are powered by electricity, the need to build batteries to power all those new EVs is paramount and the need to do that in the UK is vital for the UK’s car-making future.

There is a big battery factory on the way at Nissan’s Plant in Sunderland, but that’s not going to be enough to supply all the likely needs of UK car makers going forward.

A big step on the way to delivering more EV batteries for UK industry came with startup Britishvolt which, almost exactly a year ago, announced it had secured £1.7 billion in funding to build a Gigafactory in Northumberland including, it was said, around £100 million from the UK government.

At the time, it was also suggested that tentative deals had been done with Lotus and Aston Marting to supply batteries and that the new Plant would be 48GWh of battery production by 2028, creating 3,000 new jobs in the process and almost twice as many in the supply chain.

But as Britishvolt failed to meet agreed milestones for funding it quickly ran out of money and today, 17 January, Britishvolt announced it’s going into administration after a takeover bid from shareholders was blocked by creditors.

It’s a blow for Britishvolt’s staff, the North East economy and UK PLC, but there was enough good in the plans – especially the location –  for the project to move forward with new owners. Let’s hope that happens.