The Switzerland-based FTSE 100 mining and commodities company Glencore has been revealed as a cornerstone investor in Britishvolt, the flagship new batteries ‘gigafactory’ being build at Blyth, Northumberland. The plant, which Is currently under construction, will manufacture 300,000 electric car batteries a year when production gets up to capacity by 2027.
Glencore was an existing investor in the company, taking an equity interest in it in exchange for a deal to supply it with the nickel and cobalt needed for EV batteries. Britishvolt is currently raising a third private investment round for £200 million having already secured £100 million over the previous two rounds. Glencore has reportedly committed up to £40 million of the funds required.
A third of Britishvolt is controlled by Orral Nadjari, the company’s UAE-based founder. Britishvolt’s stated ambition is a stock exchange listing but the start-up now has enough cash in the bank to fund further research and development to improve its battery technology and commercialisation. It should now have the luxury of being able to take its time and choose the moment to go public wisely.
The construction of the gigafactory itself will be bankrolled by the £1.7 billion in project finance Britishvolt has secured from the asset manager abrnd. £100 million of state funds have also been assigned to the venture that it has been estimated will create 3000 jobs, many of them highly paid, in one of the UK’s most economically depressed regions.
Many of the world’s biggest automakers have already set deadlines by when they will stop manufacturing petrol and diesel engine cars. General Motors has set itself a 2035 deadline and Audi 2033. Most of the other big manufacturers have set a similar timescale.
Source: Nature.com
The transformation will involve a “shift from a fuel-intensive to a material-intensive energy system” and will require huge quantities of metals such as cobalt, nickel and lithium as well as rare earth metals, all of which are used in EV batteries. These metals, of which tens of kilograms are currently used in every EV battery, have yet to be mined and are often relatively rare and expensive.
One of the biggest challenges the industry faces is figuring out how to reduce the amount of materials used in EV batteries. That will undoubtedly be one of the R&D targets some of the fresh funds raised by Britishvolt will be put towards.
