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An Australian company bids for Britishvolt.

 An Aus­tralian bat­tery com­pany has made a pre­lim­in­ary bid for col­lapsed bat­tery pro­du­cer Brit­ish­volt

Britishvolt

as it seeks to cap­it­al­ise on closer ties forged between Aus­tralia and the UK over the past year to res­cue the busi­ness. David Col­lard, the founder of Recharge Indus­tries, said he would visit the Brit­ish­volt site in north-east Eng­land this week and meet gov­ern­ment offi­cials before mak­ing a formal offer. Col­lard said Bri­tain’s trade agree­ment with Aus­tralia, as well as the Aukus secur­ity alli­ance, should rein­force the bene­fits of com­bin­ing Brit­ish­volt with his com­pany’s plan to con­struct a bat­tery fact­ory in Geelong, a coastal city in Aus­tralia, by 2024. The col­lapse of Brit­ish­volt this month extin­guished the UK’s hopes of incub­at­ing a world-lead­ing global bat­tery maker.Col­lard is up against a dozen poten­tial bid­ders for the site, includ­ing Jag­uar Land Rover owner Tata Motors and DeaLab, a Lon­don fin­an­cial group with close links to Indone­sia. 

The gov­ern­ment offered Brit­ish­volt £100mn in fund­ing before it col­lapsed, on con­di­tion that it begin con­struc­tion work on the site in Northum­ber­land. Col­lard said Recharge would want to secure that money if it took over. Col­lard said he had been approached by Brit­ish­volt six months ago when it was seek­ing fin­an­cing but that the focus was then on the Geelong site.

He said the com­pany’s down­fall could be blamed partly on a decision to focus on bat­ter­ies for the elec­tric vehicle mar­ket instead of diver­si­fy­ing into energy infra­struc­ture. He added that Brit­ish­volt had burnt through too much cash build­ing its intel­lec­tual prop­erty for new bat­tery tech­no­logy. Col­lard said Recharge would prob­ably trans­fer its lith­ium-ion bat­tery tech­no­logy to Blyth to speed up the revival of the site. Honda’s Swin­don facil­ity, which pro­duced about 100,000 mod­els a year, closed in 2021, while the Stel­lantis site at Ellesmere Port ceased mak­ing the Vaux­hall Astra last year to pre­pare to make a new elec­tric van, which will start this year.

Pro­duc­tion is expec­ted to pick up this year as the global chip short­age eases and the Ellesmere Port van plant comes back online. Van pro­duc­tion, pre­dom­in­antly based at the Stel­lantis-owned Luton plant, was a bright spot last year, with a 40 per cent increase owing to strong global demand. Elec­tric and hybrid vehicles were another high­light and now account for a third of over­all pro­duc­tion. Led by the elec­tric Mini, the Nis­san Leaf and the hybrid Toyota Corolla, the num­bers of these low-emis­sion mod­els rose 40 per cent to 234,000.

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Comments

  1. James26 January 2023 at 10:35

    It seems that the leadership at Britishvolt wasn't very good or well prepared. How could they spend most of their available funds on intellectual property for new battery technology?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alex26 January 2023 at 13:03

      They should have also invested in energy infrastructure as well and had multiple plans in place in case things don't go their way. That's why they are in the state they are, because of not planning ahead and not having the right people lead the company.

      Delete
    2. Susan26 January 2023 at 13:56

      There's also the government that didn't intervene in time to save it. It's like they didn't really want to save it.

      Delete

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