UK battery start-up Britishvolt files to appoint administrators

Battery start-up Britishvolt, has filed to appoint administrators after failing to secure a buyer.

A court document revealed the move on Tuesday after the group said it was in talks with investors over a possible sale, to keep the firm afloat.

The company has been on the brink of collapse since £100m of promised government funding, to build a planned battery gigafactory, was delayed.

A source told Reuters news agency that the majority of Britishvolt staff will be made redundant.

Chief executive Graham Hoare told Sky News in November that staff agreed to a “substantial” temporary pay cut as it continued to weigh up its financial future.

The £3.8bn gigafactory project, in the Port of Blyth, Northumberland, was supported by £1.7bn of private funding. However, much of that sum would only be unlocked when the government aid was paid.

It is understood that last year, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) believed that the company had not met certain criteria for the £100m payment to be handed over, forcing it to seek cash elsewhere.

The company intended to manufacture power cells for 300,000 electric vehicle battery packs a year, eventually employing 3,000 people on the site of the former coal-fired Blyth Power Station.

Britishvolt’s ambitions were praised by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said the factory will “boost the production of electric vehicles in the UK,” and cement the country’s place “at the helm of the global green industrial revolution”.

But in October last year, Labour said the government was clearly to blame for the company’s financial troubles.

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Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said at the time: “This disastrous news is a further reminder that the economic crisis made in Downing Street is costing jobs and investment.

“It is a sight that has become all too familiar – businesses going under, jobs being lost and investment in the industries of the future going abroad rather than the UK.”

The collapse of Britishvolt could mean that more car manufacturers have to look further afield for battery supplies, as the clock ticks down to the 2030 ban on the sale of new cars powered by diesel and petrol engines.