Australia's Recharge Industries To Buy EV Firm Britishvolt

Recharge Industries of Australia was chosen as the preferred bidder on Monday to acquire Britishvolt, the failed UK startup that had struggled to fund a major electric vehicle battery factory in northern England.

The agreement, which comes just three weeks after Britishvolt went bankrupt, could help revive Britain's ambitions of developing a domestic EV battery industry to support domestic car production.

Recharge, a division of New York-based portfolio company Scale Facilitation, is constructing a large-scale lithium-ion cell factory in Australia, with production set to begin next year.

"We're thrilled to be progressing with our proposed bid for Britishvolt and can't wait to get started making a reality of our plans to build the UK's first gigafactory," Scale Facilitation CEO and Recharge founder David Collard said.

"After a competitive and rigorous process, we're confident our proposal will deliver a strong outcome for all involved."

The accounting firm EY, appointed as Britishvolt's administrators, said the bidding process saw "multiple approaches from interested parties and numerous offers".

The Recharge buyout should be completed within the next seven days, it added, without going into specifics about the bid.

Britishvolt had previously announced plans for a 3.8 billion pound ($4.57 billion) 38 gigatonne-hour plant in England's industrial north to manufacture electric vehicle batteries.

The planned Blyth plant site is regarded as Britain's best "shovel-ready" location for mass-producing EV batteries, with land already acquired and planning permission in place.

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson touted Britishvolt's project as a major step toward developing an EV industry as the country prepares to phase out combustion engine vehicles by 2030.

However, by summer 2022, Britishvolt had only raised around 200 million pounds and had pushed back its production timeline.

Its failure was viewed as a setback for the British auto industry, as industry officials see domestic EV battery plants as critical to preventing UK car production from shifting to mainland Europe.