Australian battery manufacturer Recharge Industries, a portfolio company of Scale Facilitation, a New York-based investment firm, completed the acquisition of Britishvolt, a UK-based insolvent battery venture Britishvolt, which had struggled to fund an electric vehicle gigafactory in northern England, for an undisclosed amount.
Britishvolt is a battery manufacturing company – funded in 2019 to construct a $4.6 billion (£3.8 billion) gigafactory in Cambois, a village in south-east Northumberland, England. The battery manufacturer, which had planned to build a domestic battery manufacturing facility that could support domestic EV car production – collapsed in January after the company failed to raise enough funding for the factory.
The manufacturing facility was expected to produce more than 300,000 lithium-ion batteries annually.
“Backed by our global supply chain, strategic delivery partners, and a number of significant customer agreements in place, we’re confident of making the Cambois Gigafactory a success and growing it into an advanced green energy project. We can’t wait to get started and want to start as soon as possible,” said Scale Facilitation Chief Executive David Collard. “We have the right plan in place to match and support the region’s energy and ambition to become a major player in the international battery market,” added David Collard.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson touted Britishvolt’s project as a significant step towards developing an EV industry as the country prepares to phase out combustion engine vehicles by 2030.
Following a competitive bidding process, Recharge Industries, (which is) constructing a lithium-ion cell factory in Australia, was selected as Britishvolt’s buyer. The company provided no further information about the transaction.
Commenting on the successful bid, David A. Collard, Founder and CEO of Scale Facilitation, said, “We are thrilled to have been successful in our bid for ownership of Britishvolt; our plans are the right ones for the local community and the UK economy.
According to Mercom’s Annual And Q4 2022 Funding and M&A Report for Storage, Grid & Efficiency. A record 28 energy storage companies were acquired in 2022 – the most since 2014.
