An Australian battery company has made an initial bid for collapsed British battery maker Britishvolt as it seeks to use closer ties between Australia and Britain over the past year to rescue the business.
David Collard, the founder of Recharge Industries, told the Financial Times that he will visit the Britishvolt site in Northumberland this week and meet British government officials before making a formal offer.
Collard said Britain’s free trade agreement with Australia and the Aukus security alliance should reinforce the benefits of combining Britishvolt with the company’s existing plans to build a battery factory in Geelong, a coastal city in Australia, by 2024.
“We are the pin that brings everything together,” he said, adding that Recharge has the backing of Jefferies and other international banks.
The collapse of Britishvolt this month killed Britain’s hopes of incubating the world’s leading global battery maker. The business, once valued at £700m, is expected to attract offers of less than £10m.
Collard fought off dozens of potential bidders for the site, including Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata Motors and DeaLab, a London-based financial group with close ties to Indonesia.
Administrators are expected to sell the rest of the business – including the existing site in Blyth and 26 technical staff – by the end of the month.
The British government offered Britishvolt £100 million in funding, before it collapsed, based on the condition that it must start construction work on the site in Blyth, Northumberland to unlock the money. Collard said Recharge wants to secure the money if it takes over.
Recharge was launched in 2021 by Scale Facilitation, a former partner of PwC partner Collard’s New York who has supported several start-ups in the medical technology and green energy sectors.
Collard said he had approached Britishvolt six months ago, when the British company was looking for financing options, but then focused on the Geelong site.
He said the company’s strategy had fundamental weaknesses in its business model, including a decision to focus solely on batteries for the electric vehicle market instead of diversifying into energy infrastructure.
He added that Britishvolt has burned through too much cash building its own intellectual property for new battery technology and stocking its potential external expectations. “It’s a mountain process to start from scratch,” he said.
Collard said Recharge would transfer the lithium-ion battery technology used at its Geelong plant to Blyth to speed up the restart of its UK site.
That means switching the technology to lithium-based batteries, rather than cobalt and nickel as planned, but Collard says it will enable Recharge to gain efficiencies of scale by building two plants at the same time.
He said Recharge’s global chain of 230 suppliers could tie up with the UK business to speed up the launch.
The 38-year-old Australian warned there was a risk of Britishvolt being bought by a Chinese company looking to strengthen its hold over the global battery market.
He said Anglo-Australian business would provide an opportunity to create closer manufacturing links between the two countries.
“We are not here to jump in and jump out,” said Collard of the Britishvolt proposal.