An Australian firm, Recharge Industries has bought Britishvolt, taking the UK battery start-up which collapsed last month out of administration.
Recharge Industries, which is owned by New York fund Scale Facilitation Partners, will be keeping the Britishvolt brand name, but their plans for it’s future are very different.
Britishvolt was put into administration after running out of money.
It had planned to build a giant factory to make electric car batteries near Blyth, Northumberland.
Recharge Industries is building a facility in Australia to produce batteries for electric vehicles.
Winning the bid to buy Britishvolt out of administration, Recharge Industries conceded they had paid a premium over the other bidders, but said that was indicative of their confidence in a project that would bring together Australian minerals, US battery know-how and a promising UK site.
EY, the administrators for Britishvolt, said the company was sold for an undisclosed sum. The deal includes remaining employees being transferred to Recharge.
Britishvolt had planned to build a £3.8bn factory as part a long-term strategy to boost the UK’s manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries.
It had been hoped it would create 3,000 skilled jobs. Instead, more than 200 people lost their jobs when Britishvolt collapsed.
It was forced to delay the start of production at the plant a number of times, most recently blaming “difficult external economic headwinds including rampant inflation and rising interest rates”.
Recharge Industries as the new owners intends to refocus the company on batteries for energy storage and hoping to have product available by the end of 2025. This they want to follow by producing batteries for high performance sports cars.
(Source: BBC)