India’s Tata Sons confirmed it has chosen the UK for its European gigafactory, the first to be built outside India. Investment will be over £4 billion ($5.2 billion) and annual cell-making capacity will be 40 GWh, making it one of Europe’s largest.
The factory, expected to be built in Somerset, south-west England, will produce LFP and NMC battery cells and packs for a variety of applications within the mobility and energy sectors, including its Jaguar Land Rover car production. The company said it plans a rapid ramp-up phase and the start of production in 2026, creating up to 4,000 jobs.
It will establish battery recycling to recover and reuse all the original raw materials.
UK minister for Energy Security & Net Zero Grant Shapps said the plant had been set to go to Spain but government investment, in part from the Automotive Transformation Fund, and the research set-up in the UK headed by the Faraday Institution, had persuaded Tata to invest in the UK. He would not confirm a figure of £500 million being made available in sweeteners.
N Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, said its investment will bring state-of-the-art technology to the UK.
The Advanced Propulsion Centre’s CEO, Ian Constance, said: “The UK offers an extremely competitive landscape for investment in the full research, development, and manufacturing ecosystem for electric vehicle technologies and this has been recognised by Tata. Their commitment to this gigafactory development has already had a transformative impact in awakening the battery supply chain sector to opportunities in the UK.”
