The company that tried to build an electric battery gigafactory in the North East and create thousands of jobs will be formally put out of business after its administrators signalled moves to liquidate the firm.
It had been hoped that Britishvolt would create 3,000 direct jobs and another 5,000 in its supply chains after it outlined plans in 2020 for a massive factory on site of the former Blyth Power Station coal yards.
But the company went into administration last year after failing to raise the funds needed to keep it going. Attempts by Australian firm Recharge Industries to take over the project also foundered after it was unable to pay the full £8.6m needed to take over the company.
In the meantime, Northumberland County Council took back control of the site and has sold it to American investment giant Blackstone, which will invest up to £10bn into the site to create a campus of data centres through its subsidiary QTS. The new plan will create far fewer jobs - with hundreds of people expected to work in the data centres once they are operational - but the council has agreed a £110m payment that will be earmarked for job creation schemes in the county, particularly the area around the new Northumberland rail line.
New documents have been published by administrators EY which confirm that Power by Britishvolt Limited is being moved to a creditors’ voluntary liquidation. Those documents reveal that the administrators have paid HMRC and former employees, and that there are sufficient funds to pay Britishvolt’s unsecured creditors.
The termination of Britishvolt as a company brings to an end one of the more unusual business stories of recent years. Not long after Britishvolt announced it wanted to set up a gigafactory at Cambois, the project hit its first problem when its founding chairman had to step down over revelations about his past.
Hopes that the ambitious project would come to fruition were raised when the Government agreed £100m in funding that was said would unlock £1.7bn in backing from the private sector. But Britishvolt never met the conditions needed to secure the Government funding, and after its demise, it was revealed that the company had not managed to generate any revenue and did not have any intellectual property. Despite needing to raise around £4bn for the project, even an initial target of £800m had only been 20% met, documents revealed.
