Recharge Industries’ takeover of the Britishvolt battery gigafactory project in Northmberland has completed, and the new owner has promised “thousands of green, skilled and local jobs” for the North East after successfully acquiring the doomed company.
Recharge, an Australian firm owned by a New York-listed investment company, will take over the £3.8bn project having been been identified earlier this month as the preferred bidder to take over the majority of the business.
Britishvolt collapsed in January after months of funding problems, resulting in more than 200 job losses as well as uncertainty over the 3,000 jobs the company had planned to eventually create at the site.
The failure cast a huge cloud over the whole UK motor manufacturing industry with no other plans in place for a major home-grown manufacturer of batteries to power electric vehicles.
Britishvolt was planning to build its 30GWh factory in phases to meet rising EV demand ahead of the UK’s 2030 ban of new petrol and diesel cars. The plant, located near Blyth, was expected to employ about 3,000 people when operating at full capacity. It had £100m in conditional financing from the British government, but failed to meet various conditions to unlock the funding.
Recharge also plans to build a battery factory in Geelong, a former car manufacturing hub in Australia, free from Chinese and Russian materials.
