Skip to main content

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.

www.sba.tax

Labels:

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

Post a Comment

Cloud Bookkeeping

HS2 cost cuts new routes and add delays.

 Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have begun work on «Project Sil­ver­light» sug­gest­ing the high­speed rail scheme might face four addi­tional years of delay. The planned High Speed 2 rail line faces fur­ther delays of up to four years and more cuts to the project under plans being drawn up by min­is­ters to rein in its bal­loon­ing costs. The extra delays to the coun­try’s biggest infra­struc­ture project would mean that it would not be com­pleted until as late as 2045 — 12 years after ori­gin­ally planned. «This is a func­tion of infla­tion; we are hav­ing to find huge sav­ings because the cost of everything the depart­ment is already doing will have become so much more expens­ive by then,» said one gov­ern­ment offi­cial. In Octo­ber, the FT repor­ted that the Treas­ury had asked HS2’s man­age­ment team to identify poten­tial cuts or «scope reduc­tions» to the high-speed line. Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have sub­sequently begun work on Project Sil­ver­light aimed at fi...
4 comments
Read more

Doubt on CS's collateral.

  Credit Suisse provided an emergency $140mn loan to Greensill Capital based partly on invoices to companies that deny ever doing the business stated on the documents. The Swiss bank provided the loan in October 2020, less than five months before the collapse of Greensill, a supply chain finance firm that counted former British prime minister David Cameron as a senior adviser. Invoices issued by metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Commodities and sold to Greensill formed part of the collateral for the loan, according to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the transaction. Yet several of the parties named on the invoices have told the FT they did no business with Liberty. GFG has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Credit Suisse’s loan had a clause dictating that the collateral value had to be equal to or greater than the $140mn borrowed. The terms of the debt agreement only allowed invoices on Green-sill’s balance sheet to count towards this tally if t...
2 comments
Read more

Tax cut

  Sterling tumbled against the dollar to below $1 . 09 ,  hitting its lowest point since 1985 ,  after UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled a £45bn debt-financed tax-cutting package that sparked a historic increase in borrowing costs .  Kwarteng’s political and economic gamble includes the biggest set of tax cuts for 50 years ,  with the end of the 45p additional rate for the highest earners as well as a sharp reduction in levies on dividends .  But concern over the amount of debt required to finance the tax cuts triggered a frenetic day of trading that raised doubts on whether Britain’s new economic approach was sustainable .  «Britain will be remembered for having pursued the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time» . Kwarteng has staked the political fortunes of the Conservative party on the bet that the radical tax cuts and deregulation will raise Britain’s sluggish growth rate to 2 . 5 per cent .  «This is a new appr...
Post a Comment
Read more