An Australian company has been selected as the preferred bidder for Britishvolt, a battery start-up company based in the United Kingdom that went bankrupt a month ago.
An agreement has been reached between Recharge Industries, which is owned by the New York fund Scale Facilitation Partners, and Britishvolt to purchase the company’s business and assets.
After exhausting their financial resources, the Britishvolt company was forced to enter administration.
It had intended to construct a massive factory near Blyth, Northumberland, dedicated to the production of batteries for electric vehicles.
According to EY, the accounting firm that has been tasked with the responsibility of supervising the sale of Britishvolt, “Completion of the deal is likely to occur within the next seven days.”
The production of batteries for electric vehicles is going to be handled in a new plant that Recharge Industries is constructing in Australia.
On its ambitions for the Britishvolt business, which had aimed to establish a £3.8 billion factory as part of a long-term goal to enhance the manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries in the United Kingdom, little information has emerged so far.
It was envisaged that it would result in the creation of 3,000 skilled employees. Instead, the bankruptcy of Britishvolt resulted in the loss of employment for more than 200 employees.
David Collard, the founder of Recharge Industries and chief executive officer of Scale Facilitation, stated that the company “can’t wait to get started creating a reality of our aspirations to develop the UK’s first gigafactory.”
According to the information provided on its website, the battery factory that Recharge is currently constructing in Geelong, Melbourne, is scheduled to commence operations in the year 2024.
According to reports, Recharge prevailed over a number of other competitors to become Britishvolt’s chosen bidder.
The procedure that EY followed, according to their statement, “included the consideration of many approaches from interested parties and numerous offers received.”
The deputy fund manager at Genus Henderson Investments, Indriatti van Hien, was quoted as saying to the BBC that the acquisition of Britishvolt would “truly give them a toe-hold in Europe.”
It is particularly interesting since there are a lot of corporations from the United Kingdom competing for this asset as well.
