Britishvolt to build £200 million West Midlands scale-up facility
Today (31 May 2022), Britishvolt has announced it will build UK battery scale-up facilities in the West Midlands, with an investment exceeding £200 million.
The Britishvolt facility, being leased from Prologis at its Hams Hall site, will create and sustain upwards of 150 highly-skilled and well-paid technology jobs. It also aims to be net-zero carbon in its construction. The facility enables Britishvolt to rapidly ramp up cells that are production-ready to be manufactured in larger volumes at its Northumberland Gigaplant.
The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC), which supports the automotive sector’s transition to net zero, has supported the scale-up and industrialisation of this technology by investing in the Britishvolt Gigafactory in Blyth through the Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF).
APC CEO Ian Constance said that today’s announcement is another significant step towards building much-needed UK battery capability at an industrial scale.
Our insight shows that by 2030 the UK will need over 90GWh per annum of batteries for cars and light commercial vehicles alone and represents over 11% of the total demand across Europe. The new scale-up facilities announced by Britishvolt today will help to accelerate the production of battery cells to meet the growing demand to electrify the automotive industry. The Advanced Propulsion Centre is proud to support an extremely competitive landscape for investment in the full research, development and manufacturing ecosystem for electric vehicle technologies, which is critical for the decarbonisation of transport.
APC manage the ATF on behalf of the UK government and has worked closely with the team at Britishvolt to secure ATF support for its battery manufacturing plant in Northumberland, which is expected to provide up to a third of the UK’s total demand.
As APC’s Automotive Transformation Director, Julian Hetherington, explained earlier this year:
We have a vibrant and diverse industry, and Britishvolt’s significant investment in R&D and manufacturing will help establish competitive supply chains and satisfy this burgeoning demand – and in doing so will create thousands of highly-skilled, green jobs, regenerating a site that was previously home to the UK’s largest coal-fired power station. This is true transformation, unlocked by the government’s commitment to support green growth and levelling-up.
The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) holds a unique position between industry, academia and government which gives us access to insight that enables our Technology Trends team to produce automotive forecasting. You can find our insights, reports, and additional context behind the challenges and opportunities as we transition to net zero here on our website.