The Australian company wanting to buy Britishvolt has insisted it will complete the deal this month with a finance package that will accelerate the project.
Fresh doubts arose about the scheme, which aims to create thousands of jobs in south-east Northumberland, when it emerged that Recharge Industries had not paid the final instalment in an £8.6m deal to buy Britishvolt out of administration. Administrators EY said that put Recharge in default on the business sale agreement, though this has been disputed by the company and its parent group Scale Facilitation.
Instead the company says it now hopes to close a funding facility in August that would allow for the closing of the deal to buy Britishvolt and also purchase the site at Cambois and provide working capital for the project.
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The company said: “The timing of the final instalment to the administrator is linked to a funding facility which when closed, will also cover the cost of the land acquisition and provide additional working capital for the project. The financier is in direct contact with the counterparties and we anticipate to close in August following a period of significant due diligence. We dispute we are in default of the BSA (business sale agreement).
“Closing out the transaction will allow for the allocation of highly valuable intellectual property and binding customer orders to fast track the 海角视频 project.”
Britishvolt was founded in 2019 and announced plans in 2020 to build a battery gigafactory on the site of the old Blyth Power Station coal yards that would create 3,000 direct jobs and 5,000 in its supply chain. But the company collapsed three years later, laying off most of its 200 staff, after being unable to secure sufficient funding for the project.
Recharge was named as the preferred bidder to take over the project earlier this year, but there have been concerns that another overseas start-up could also struggle to raise the estimated £4bn needed to make the project a reality.
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The latest administrators’ report on Britishvolt showed that it likely owed somewhere between £130m and £160m when it went out of business. The biggest debt, of around £26.7m, is to DC Energy, a company which was meant to supply around €100m (£86m) worth of electrode manufacturing gear to the British start-up. Korea’s Hana Technology, which also had an agreement to supply Britishvolt, was owed £22.3m, while mining giant Glencore, an investor, was owed £20m.
The taxman is also hoping to get around £3m, largely in income tax and VAT, that the business owes to the exchequer. Employees are owed around £279,000, the administrators at EY said.