What the collapse of Britishvolt means for the UK

and a promise of future funding should strict conditions be met.

The route to meeting these conditions is entirely reliant on investment from the private sector.

Maggie Kelleher Law, Second Year

Such practice is not conducive to success in such a competitive market and this industry is one where success is necessary.

services and extensive waiting lists for screenings and surgical procedures. Those that can are beginning to steer towards private healthcare.

This crisis had been dormant for a substantial period of time, but the onset of COVID-19 in 2020 burst open the floodgates. It is almost inconceivable that the politicians blamed the poor performance of the NHS to the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union in the lead up to the EU Referendum in 2016. Brexit has yet to deliver the promised cash boost of £350 million a week or bolster staffing in the public sector.

The primary care of the NHS is severely eroded. As a result, minor health issues that should have been treated by GPs have had to be treated by the A & E units,

Sajid Javid, one of the most senior figures of the Conservative Party and the former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, declared that ‘the 75-year-old model of the NHS is unsustainable’ and ‘too often the appreciation for the NHS has become a religious fervour and a barrier to reform’. Despite the warm words of Mr. Javid regarding the NHS, recounting his earliest memories of it while living in Bristol and his father’s end of life care more recently. The former minister pointed out that patients are going to be charged for GP appointments and A & E visits to make the NHS a working model. Does this seem like a stealth route to privatisation? It reads more like a fast track to privatisation. It appears that the idealist vision of 1948, under which the NHS was founded, has dissipated into fine smithereens. To quote the immortal words of Dr. Seuss ‘Don’t cry it’s over, smile because it happened!’

When Britishvolt was founded in 2019, the battery start-up was hailed by the Government as Britain’s new hope for industry post-Brexit and a pioneer in levelling up. Three years later, the company has collapsed without any product to sell and £120 million in debt. This failure raises serious concerns about the future of British industry. Why was this product so unattractive to investors? Why is the Government failing to invest in greener energy strategies?

Britishvolt’s ‘big hope’ was the manufacturing and sale of batteries for electric cars. Boris Johnson told us that such batteries would be the new frontier of British industry, creating “thousands of jobs in our industrial heartlands” whilst forming part of “our green industrial revolution”.

Britishvolt thought so too. A presentation given to investors asserted that by 2029, European battery demand would support the creation of 15 Britishvolts. The company was valued at $1 billion.

Why then did it fail? It is easy to blame the management of the company whose profligate spending began in 2019, before they were generating sales, let alone profits. Moreover, the company was starting from nothing, already behind foreign firms such as CATL, the Chinese supplier of most of the world’s electric batteries. Yet, similar companies have been able to sustain themselves. Northvolt, the Swedish battery company received major investments from BMW and Volkswagen, despite also starting from scratch in this high-risk field. The firms differ in the funding they received. Northvolt received €350 million in EU funds, whereas Britishvolt were promised £100 million by the British Government only after their production had begun. Of course, they never received this funding. In this, lies the route of the project’s failure.

The UK Government’s strict adherence to free market thinking is diminishing the nation’s industrial prospects. In the case of Britishvolt, they simply provided a field

If it is the Government’s ambition for Britain’s manufacturing industries to prosper (and to reach net 0 carbon emissions by 2050) they must invest in these initiatives. In the United States, 70 specialist battery companies have been formed since the Inflation Reduction Act.

This act requires manufacturers to buy batteries locally to qualify for consumer subsidies.

Without similar intervention from the UK Government, their energy and levelling up promises are empty.

It may be true that the company was doomed from its inception, and that an earlier £100 million investment would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. This does not let the Government off the hook. The business minister at the time, Jane Hunt boasted that Britishvolt was a Brexit success just months ago.

We need honesty about the implications Brexit is having on British industry, not false hope thrust on a project and no support to keep that project going.

As it stands, the site is likely to be bought by a Chinese or Australian battery company. Greybull Capital are also reportedly pushing for a bid. Both would be controversial outcomes. Greybull capital, the private equity firm is best known for its British Steel takeover in 2014 and the collapse of British steel three years later. The Bankruptcy cost the UK Government millions.

Ultimately, it is the town of Blyth that will suffer. Management at Britishvolt spent three years taking private jets and providing the team with expensive company years.

The Government were able to distract from the failures of Brexit and make extravagant levelling-up promises. The business minister promised 3,000 direct jobs from the project and greater investment across the town. Those jobs do not exist, and this investment will never come.

Britain’s future in the electric battery market looks fragile. UK car production has fallen to its lowest in 66 years. The Government’s reluctance to support businesses from the ground up is killing British Industry.