A UK startup aims to open a battery cell plant in Wales close to a new factory where Aston Martin is building its new DBX SUV.
The site at Bro Tathan business park in St Athan in South Wales could provide up to 3,500 jobs, Britishvolt said in a statement. The area has been hard hit by Ford's decision to close its Bridgend engine plant by September this year. Britishvolt did not say if Aston Martin would be a customer of the planned factory.
Britishvolt and AMTE are hoping to land a contract from Jaguar Land Rover, Britishvolt's former CEO Lars Carlstrom told Automotive News Europe in May.
Britishvolt said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Welsh government.
In May, the company signed another MOU with UK startup AMTE Power to work jointly on making lithium ion batteries for electric cars.
The site in Wales was picked from 40 potential locations because of factors such as import/export accessibility, availability of labor and skilled staff, and convenient geographical proximity to customers and local industrial companies, Britishvolt said.
The startup plans a flotation early next year and will seek to raise an initial 1.2 billion pounds ($1.5 billion) in capital, Orral Nadjari, the company's current CEO, said in the statement.
So far, the supplier has raised about 10 million pounds from Scandinavian and Middle Eastern investors, reports say.
The company said in the statement that the St Athan plant would be "subject to UK government funding."
Britishvolt aims to start building the 30 gigawatt-hours factory in the second quarter of 2021 and begin production in 2023. The company says it will also build a 200 Mega Watt solar power plant at the site to power the factory and cut its carbon footprint.
In contrast, Tesla's Gigafactory in the U.S. state of Nevada has a current capacity of 35 gigawatt-hours per year.
The UK government has called for large-scale battery production in the country in part to weaken the dependency on Asian manufacturers and to ensure the industry retains manufacturing jobs as it moves towards electrification.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Tesla had been planning battery production near Berlin at its first European factory, but has now slimmed down its plans to focus solely on car output. The company had also considered the UK as a possible production site, but changed mind, citing uncertainty over Brexit.
