Britishvolt Battery Gigafactory in the North East

ongoing

Britishvolt, the UK’s foremost investor in battery technologies, has selected a site in the North East of England to build the UK’s first battery Gigafactory. The company has acquired exclusive rights to a site in Blyth Northumberland and intends to begin construction in Summer 2021. World-class lithium-ion batteries will be in production by the end of 2023. Total investment for Britishvolt’s Gigafactory is £2.6bn making it the largest industrial investment in the North East since Nissan’s arrival in 1984 and one of the largest-ever industrial investments in the UK. By the final phase of the project in 2027 it will be employing up to 3000 highly skilled people, producing over 300,000 lithium-ion batteries for the UK automotive industry. It will further provide up to 5000 jobs in the wider supply chain. Britishvolt’s Gigafactory is widely regarded as being strategically important for the UK automotive industry in order for it to maintain competitive advantage as we accelerate towards an increasingly electrified future. The building of a battery Gigafactory is also one of the key pillars of the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s, ten-point plan for the UK’s green recovery and an important step to a Net Zero economy by 2050.