Chinese battery manufacturer Eve Energy has been named as a party in advanced talks to build a gigafactory in the UK’s West Midlands region. Eve did not respond to a request from BEST to confirm this.
Cllr Jim O’Boyle, Labour cabinet member for jobs, regeneration and climate change on the local Coventry City Council, said this is information leaked from talks and he would not confirm it. He repeated what he had earlier said that the gigafactory representatives are in talks with a number of Asian battery manufacturers, who are expressing “keen interest”.
He told BEST: “They have had conversations with us and the government…everything is going in the right direction.”
He said such talks take a long time. “Clearly, if the UK is serious about wanting to move towards electrification and have indigenous capability to manufacture batteries and have an automotive sector in the UK, we have to fund the investment going forward. I remain very optimistic about that.”
The projected cost of the factory is £2.5 billion ($3.2 billion) and is estimated to create 6,000 jobs. O’Boyle said there has never been an investment of this size that did not require government support. “I’m quite comfortable to leave it to those with their hands on the cheque book. We’ve set it all up…It’s only a matter of time.”
He said it would be up to any investor to spell out what level of government support it thinks is needed. He confirmed the investors his alliance has spoken to have had discussions with the UK government – it declined to comment on such talks.
The West Midlands gigafactory project is a public-private partnership between Coventry City Council and Coventry Airport, with the support of West Midlands industrial groups, local government and academic institutions.
They point to the gigafactory being the only site in the UK with planning permission in place. The plant would have capacity for 60GWh per annum and the potential to become Britain’s largest battery manufacturing facility. All utilities are in place, and the site is good to go with production in 2025.
O’Boyle said it is about more than a gigafactory. It would be at the heart of a campus combining a “centre of excellence for electrification, battery technology and manufacturing.”
The proposed gigafactory is geographically at the heart of the UK automotive industry and is next door to the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre.
Photo: Coventry Council Councillor Jim O’Boyle said gigafactory talks are going in the right direction.
