Ex-Lotus boss plans £1bn battery gigafactory in Britain – Volklec hopes to start production at publicly funded UK Battery Industrialisation Centre
Volklec hopes to start production at publicly funded UK Battery Industrialisation Centre
The former chief executive of Lotus has unveiled plans to develop a £1bn gigafactory in the UK under a tie-up with a Chinese battery company.
Phil Popham, the executive director of British battery company Volklec, said the company expected to open a 10 gigawatt-hour (GWh) factory by the end of the decade.
It plans to start production at the publicly funded UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) by the end of this year, selling battery cells to high-performance cars, aerospace and maritime companies.
It marks the latest effort to develop a home-grown battery manufacturer after the failures of Britishvolt and AMTE Power, both of which went into administration in 2023, and Northvolt, the European champion that went bankrupt last year.
European battery makers have struggled amid uncertain demand for electric vehicles and intense competition from Chinese manufacturers that have dramatically brought down prices.
Mr Popham, a former Jaguar Land Rover executive who ran Lotus between 2018 and 2021, said there were a significant number of manufacturers who remained concerned about supply. “We think there’s a market first for a UK, independent battery manufacturer,” he said.
The company has signed a licencing deal with China’s Far East Battery to manufacture their designs at UKBIC, the Coventry-based research centre. It will also be able to source cells from the Chinese company to meet supply orders as it builds up production.
Mr Popham said,
There’s been enough failures,
“And I think some of those failures are due to the complexity, the scale of investment and the time that’s involved in creating your own chemistry, your own mechanical engineering, building the factory, building up your own supply base. Our approach is very much more pragmatic, and the thought process we had was to licence proven technology.”
It’s a modest investment compared to those that have gone before us.
Volklec, funded by investment group Frontive, has raised around £20m to date. Mr Popham said the company would need to raise around £100m to get to significant manufacturing scale before a £1bn investment that would create a 10 GWh factory.
Analysts have estimated that Britain will need 200GWh of capacity to meet demand by 2040. The UK only has one gigafactory in operation, a 1.8GWh AESC plant that supports Nissan production in Sunderland. Two more – a second AESC Nissan plant with a 15.8 GWh capacity and a 40GWh Jaguar Land Rover facility – are planned.
Mr Popham said potential customers were
Concerned about supply in the long term, concerned about rules of origin and concerned about tariffs.
He said the company’s plans were “not predicated on government support” but that the company would consider asking for it as it grows.
He said the company planned to move from producing energy cells to higher-performance power cells, which could be used in sports cars and aerospace.
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Ex-Lotus boss plans £1bn battery gigafactory in Britain – Volklec hopes to start production at publicly funded UK Battery Industrialisation Centre, source
