Britishvolt’s gigafactory plans have received a new lease of life from US-Australian startup Recharge Industries, which has made a bid for the collapsed battery firm.
Recharge’s non-binding offer re-energises hopes for the UK-based electric vehicle (EV) battery factory that Britishvolt had been due to build in Northumberland prior to its collapse into administration earlier this month.
Part of New York-headquartered Scale Facilitation, Recharge wants to entirely acquire Britishvolt, rather than just the factory site, according to Australian Financial Review.
“Strengthening our friends in the UK, especially when most others are kicking them when they’re down, is in our interest,” said David Collard, chief executive of Scale Facilitation.
Britishvolt failed to secure £100mln worth of funding from the government to help it build the proposed £3.8bn site near Blyth, leading to its collapse early last week.
Ernst & Young was subsequently called in as administrator, retaining just 26 out of 300 Britishvolt employees retained to aid the sale of the business.
Speculation that Glencore PLC (LSE:GLEN), which provided emergency funding in November, and Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata Motors were enquiring about the abandoned site grew after Britishvolt’s collapse.
Despite being valued at £800mln only a year ago, it is suggested that Britishvolt could now be sold for as little as £10mln, with a takeover by Recharge seeing it become a dominant player in the UK’s domestic EV battery production.
Recharge is building a lithium-ion battery cell factory in the Australian state of Victoria that aims to produce 2GWh of annual battery cell production when it comes online in 2024, scaling up to 6GWh annually by 2025, using technology from New York-based C4V.