Australian battery start-up launches bid for Britishvolt after spectacular crash

Geelong-based battery start-up Recharge Industries has reportedly lodged a last-minute bid to salvage failed UK battery maker Britishvolt, which collapsed earlier this month.

According to a repor by the Australian Financial Review on Wednesday, Recharge Industries has reportedly submitted a non-binding offer for Britishvolt that is designed to save the company, rather than just pick it clean for parts.

Britishvolt, once the great hope of the nascent UK EV battery industry, had been wavering for some time due to a cash squeeze. As we reported last November, Britishvolt had been denied a £30 million advance in funding by the British government which led to preparations to appoint administrators.

Earlier this month, Britishvolt was forced into administration after several last-minute deals to save the company fell through.

Once valued at £800 million and with £100 million in conditional funding from the UK government, Britishvolt was planning to build a 30GWh EV battery gigafactory at the former Blyth coal-fired power station in Northumberland.

It is this 93-hectare Northumberland site that is drawing a number of bidders, who are looking only to acquire the land at a discount.

Enter Recharge Industries, a portfolio company of New York-based investment firm Scale Facilitation which was founded by Geelong-born CEO David Collard, who had previously spent a decade on Wall Street, mostly with PwC.

Recharge Industries wants to save Britishvolt, including the 26 battery experts still on the company’s payroll. It is facing competition in the bidding process from a number of other companies.

Recharge itself was only founded in 2021 and is planning to deploy a battery-making technology that avoids the use of cobalt or nickel. The unique battery chemistry, known as bio-mineralized lithium mixed-metal phosphate (BM-LMP), requires fewer metals and less-toxic materials than comparable lithium cell batteries.

Production is expected to get underway in 2024 at a gigafactory set to be built in Geelong this year. With equipment already secured for the initial 2GWh of annual battery cell production, Recharge Industries is planning to scale up to 6GWh annually by 2025 before scaling up to 30GWh annually by 2028.

According to AFR, Collard is set to fly into London this week to present his case to save Britishvolt to both government and industry – an argument which Collard believes is in keeping with the recently signed AUKUS pact on technology partnerships between Australia, the UK, and the United States.

“Keeping Britishvolt viable and in the hands of friendly nations and companies is critical to the security of British and European supply chains and advanced manufacturing capabilities – this is a version of AUKUS at work,” Collard told AFR.

“Recharge Industries has done in 18 months what Britishvolt has struggled to do in three years working by themselves. By combining, we can put the sort of acceleration into Britishvolt that you’d expect from the best EV on the market.”