Council pumps £500,000 extra into gigafactory plans
THE MONEY WILL BE SPENT ON MARKETING THE SITE TO POTENTIAL INVESTORS
COVENTRY City Council is pumping an extra £500,000 into plans to build a huge gigafactory at Coventry Airport. The money will go on marketing the site to investors and was approved at a meeting on Wednesday (June 22).
The new electric battery factory is a joint venture by the council and the airport owners. It is set to bring in £2.5billion of investment and 6,000 jobs to the region, and earlier this year got government support.
But no car makers have been found as partners for the factory despite plans first being announced last year. In March it was reported that Jaguar Land Rover were in talks with Envision AESC, a rival electric battery producer.
And other gigafactories are planned for areas in the north east of the UK as car makers in the country race to move to electric vehicle production by 2030. Officers told the meeting, chaired by Cabinet Member for Jobs, Regeneration and Climate Change, councillor Jim O’boyle, that Coventry Airport will also put in £500,000 of funding to market the site to potential investors. They said the council is “working with senior people in the auto industry” on the plans.
Shadow Cabinet Member for Jobs, Regeneration and Climate Change, Cllr Ryan Simpson asked how the money would be used given the advantages of other potential gigafactory sites in the UK.
A council officer at the meeting replied: “The thing that we really do that no other site can is, we are the only site that is currently in an existing automotive cluster.
“[We’re] beginning to hear from investors that the North East is already saturated in terms of employment.”
The officer stressed that batteries will be “much more widely used than cars” in future. Houses will have battery sinks to store renewable energy, he said.
Cllr O’boyle also said there were benefits to making batteries in the UK as opposed to overseas.
“You don’t build things abroad to then import them - it’s hellishly expensive, hellishly difficult and quite dangerous,” he said. “That is why it makes sense to have [a gigafactory] here.”
You don’t build things abroad to then import them - it’s hellishly expensive, hellishly difficult and quite dangerous Cllr Jim O’boyle