New director to lead electric battery project
THE company behind plans to create a huge battery plant in South Wales for electric vehicles, creating 3,500 jobs, has appointed a project director to its growing team.
Start-up venture Britishvolt, which announced a location on the Welsh Government-owned Bro Tathan Business Park in the Vale of Glamorgan earlier this year for its ambitious £1.2bn gigafactory, has appointed Ray Macera to deliver the construction of the proposed project.
Mr Macera is a veteran of leading large-scale automotive projects, most recently the Gestamp pressing facility that supplies Jaguar Land Rover’s Nitra plant in Slovakia.
Moreover, NG Bailey, the UK’s largest independent engineering construction venture, will lead the planned gigafactory, with Ridge and Partners providing project management of the architecture.
Both businesses have recently helped deliver the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UK BIC) in Coventry which has been funded by the UK Government-backed Faraday Battery Challenge.
Additionally, automotive manufacturing experts Rolton Group have been selected to undertake all engineering design, while property company Savills are undertaking infrastructure and planning services.
Britishvolt said, subject to planning, it would start work on what would be the UK’s first gigafactory next year, with it becoming full operational by 2023.
It would produce lithium-ion battery technology for the automotive and renewable energy sector. It would also have a 200 megawatt solar plant. The gigafactory would be one kilometre long and 500 metres wide.
However, the start-up is being coy about how it will raise more than £1bn of finance needed to realise the project.
It said it couldn’t comment at this stage on the proposed make-up of its fundraising in terms of what could be secured through a stock market flotation, which could see it reverse into an existing listed entity, debt finance and what it could secure from the UK Government’s Automotive Transformation Fund.
The UK Government could back up to five gigafactory projects across the UK over the next five years. Britishvolt is just one of a number of interested players looking to deliver gigafactories. It has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Welsh Government for the Bro Tathan Business Park project. The former MoD facility is already home to Aston Martin’s new factory for its DBX sport utility vehicle.
However, at this stage, although if the project gets funding planning should be relatively straightforward, the Welsh Government has not provided Britishvolt with any financial assistance.
A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We are in the early stages of discussions with Britishvolt about its plans to develop a battery manufacturing plant in South Wales. No Welsh Government money has been invested in it to date.”
Britishvolt project director Mr Macera, said: “It’s exciting to be involved in such a strategically important project for Britain’s industrial future. Building a gigaplant in Wales is a giant task but with such a focused mission and such strength in depth with the pedigree of Britishvolt’s appointed partners we are already off to a strong start.”
Chief executive of Britishvolt Orral Nadjara said: “Our mission is for the gigaplant to begin supplying the automotive and energy industries with world-class batteries, powering the electric revolution, so it’s essential that we hire world-class talent and forge leading partnerships to help us achieve our goal.
“With these highly experienced new partners leading the construction phase we have the expertise to build and equip a gigaplant that will be transformative for UK car-making, the renewable energy industry and the entire British economy.
“We already have momentum, working and deploying capital expenditure early in the process so that we can accurately assess the level of UK government support that will be required to enable us to move the project forward.
“We’re also working with agility and speed. Thanks to previous experience with the UK BIC plant, we have achieved more progress in the past five weeks than similar projects have done in six months.”
The battery industry is forecast to be worth £5bn domestically by 2025, and the demand for lithium ion cells across a number of industries, including vehicle electrification, is already increasing dramatically.
Britishvolt is seeking to fill this gap in the market, but also to move to leverage the UK’s lithium ion battery research development and academic community.