Britishvolt Plots £200M Fundraise For Blyth Gigafactory
Firm reveals it has secured a promise of a further £40m investment from miner Glencore as it unveils plans for a new funding round and Canadian expansion
Gigafactory developer Britishvolt has today announced it plans to raise another £200m to support its plans to develop the UK’s electric vehicle (EV) battery ecosystem, confirming it has already secured £40m towards its fund-raising target from existing investor Glencore.
The company, which secured £100m from the UK government in late January, said the new funds would be used to develop its flagship battery plant in Blyth, Northumberland and a pilot facility and research and development centre.
It noted that as its “key strategic partner”, British-Swiss mining giant Glencore had committed to provide the cornerstone for the latest funding round with a £40m investment. Under the terms of previously agreed deals, the miner is to supply cobalt for the lithium-ion batteries produced in Blyth, and the companies are to collaborate on a 100,000 tonnes per year capacity battery recycling plant in Kent that is expected to start processing used batteries by 2023.
Britishvolt expects its Northumberland gigafactory to be running at full capacity by 2028 and claims to have signed deals with four separate OEMs representing cumulative demand of 7GWh by 2024/2025. To date, UK sports car manufacturer Lotus is the only automaker to officially announce it will source batteries from the factory.
Britishvolt said it expected the release this year of an official A-sample battery cell to its partners would result in more commitments from customers over the coming months.
“Following on from the hugely positive news of government backing for our first full-scale gigaplant, and having secured £1.7bn of private capital for construction of the shell and core, Britishvolt will now open its Series C fundraise,” said Kasra Pezeshki, chief investment officer. “We are increasingly excited by the number of potential growth and investment opportunities available to the business. Our interactions with the capital markets, and customers, show that demand for low-carbon, responsibly-manufactured batteries is rapidly growing day by day.”
The company has also revealed it is in discussions with the Canadian government about plans to expand its operations in the country.
In other battery market news, minerals recycling developer Neometals has applied for a listing on London Stock Exchange’s AIM market, in a bid to expand its shareholder base ahead of moving forward with key recycling projects in Europe this year.
The company, which already lists on the Australian Securities Exchange, is primarily focused on recycling metals for use in electric vehicles and is aiming to develop projects which will produce a number of in-demand materials from scrap materials, including lithium, nickel, cobalt, and vanadium.
It is working with Germany’s SMS Group on a joint lithium-ion battery manufacturing venture called Primobius, which plans to begin commercial shredding operations in Hilchenbach Germany in the first half of this year.
“Neometals offers its shareholders exposure through a diversified portfolio of projects which will produce the critical materials needed by the electric vehicle and energy storage sectors,” said Chris Reed, chief executive officer of Neometals. “Through those projects we are commercialising our proprietary green processing technologies that are intended to support decarbonising those supply chains.”
In a notice published on the London Stock Exchange website yesterday, the company said it had 68 patents pending and granted for minerals and metals recycling processes that covered both its current and potential geographies of operation.
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