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EY narrowed the list of Britishvolt buyers.

Brit­ish­volt’s admin­is­trator EY has nar­rowed down the list of poten­tial buy­ers of the col­lapsed UK bat­tery start-up to five suit­ors, with Aus­tralian peer Recharge Indus­tries among the lead­ing con­tenders. 


Electric car
Brit­ish­volt had been plan­ning to build a £3.8bn giga­fact­ory in Blyth, north­east Eng­land, that would have formed a key­stone of the UK elec­tric car industry but fell into admin­is­tra­tion this month after run­ning out of cash. If no deal is reached by the end of Janu­ary, the site will be sold inde­pend­ently of the intel­lec­tual prop­erty, which includes bat­tery tech­no­logy and 26 Brit­ish­volt staff. Recharge Indus­tries, which is also plan­ning to build a bat­tery plant in the Aus­tralian city of Geelong, has made a bid of about £30mn. It has shown proof of funds to EY, and exec­ut­ives from the com­pany are vis­it­ing the Blyth site, accord­ing to two people famil­iar with the mat­ter.

Tak­ing on the busi­ness will be com­plic­ated for any buyer because of the vast cash flow out­lays needed either to adopt Brit­ish­volt’s strategy or to redraw it from scratch, adding to the chal­lenge for EY in identi­fy­ing whether bid­ders have access to suf­fi­cient funds. Brit­ish­volt’s in-house tech­no­logy is at a late pro­to­type stage and requires more fund­ing to com­mer­cial­ise. Nevertheless, sev­eral car­makers and bat­tery experts that have tested its wares have deemed it impress­ive, and Mer­cedes-Benz placed a small order with the busi­ness last year, accord­ing to two people. Buy­ers that show they have suf­fi­cient work­ing cap­ital will be hop­ing to secure the £100mn grant that the UK gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ously pledged to Brit­ish­volt, although the even­tual buyer is likely to have to reapply for the money, accord­ing to two people with know­ledge of the pro­cess.

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  1. Kyle28 January 2023 at 12:22

    I think the Australian company will seal the deal soon and that would probably be best. It's a question of whether the company has good leaders that can take Britishvolt to the next level.

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