Business collapses with implications for 750,000 jobs

This factory was due to be built near where I live, there is very little industry left now as previous heavy industry has all closed down. It’s such a shame. It’s turning to an industrial wasteland .

Britishvolt was a dream, all they had was ambition and clever computer graphics, they had never built a battery. Investors simply did not have confidence, Brexit made it worse but I’m sure was not the main cause of failure.

It’s not the disaster that some are predicting, we will have battery factories in the UK, we could have them very soon all it takes is the government to be serious about the investment needed to attract an existing manufacturer.

I’m pleased to see £300m to British Steel is poised to go ahead with £1bn from its Chinese owner.
£2m also for a medicinal cannabis company in Scotland.

Hague is definitely blaming Brexit. Perhaps that in this case, there were other reasons. But Brexit is certainly a factor, and one that would affect other companies with great products and technology. The issue of investment, cooperation, accessible market, ease of transport and import/exports- will be the same for all. Flawed or un-flawed.

youtu.be/XNctoXO95KQ

I'm going to get my hair cut.

Anybody else want to take this one?

I am not an advocate for electric cars. Listened to a broadcast a couple of weeks ago in which the pollution in producing 1 electric car was compared to the emissions of vehicles and gas boilers in the whole of Birmingham. Pacific seabed is now being trawled and destroyed to harvest luthium for batteries. Pollution needs to be reduced but at what cost.

Although I agree with your second paragraph Fleurpepper I do not believe this company failed because of Brexit but because they were a badly run company.

They were using unproven technology that nobody had any evidence would work, and they could not produce a working prototype. Investment in risky products is good, and can produce a good return if they work, but in this case the risk was too great, and it actuated. Because all our EV strategy depended on this company.

I believe that they already had £2bn in investment and it wasn't that investment wasn't available, it was that the company was not well run.

This was not blue skies research, it was technology that should have been at the stage of commercialisation and it was far from that.

I think Hague's blaming of Brexit was a knee jerk reaction, and in this case is not correct. But the government seem to have provided funding and lauded a company that was never going to succeed.

MaizieD

volver

Of course we need innovation, but nobody is going to invest in a company that can't be confident about its product actually working, if a whole industry depends on it.

Anyway, I'm surmising at the moment. But I can rattle on about innovation for hours. I'll try not to. 😁

I'd be glad if you could find anything relevant, volver. I had a look, but couldn't find any mention of the technology, proven or otherwise.

But I know my search skills are not brilliant.

So far, there seems to be two stories

1) People are very reluctant to invest in the UK because government has no coherent industrial policy. This one is widely mentioned.

2) The 'unproven technology' story. Not mentioned at all in anything I've read.

As said, I don't know enough about this particular firm and why it didn't succeed.

But you are right, no-one want to invest in UK. Because they have lost all EU cooperation, access to large research and innovative projects and funding. And also because the UK has real issues currently (and yes, it is due to Brexit) with access to internation supply chains, transport, imports and mainly, exports of any innovative product they might sucessfully produce.

As said, huge numbers of products we use in all fields, were unproven at some point... All innovation involves risk, and at times, failure.

Sadly, this company had no firm contracts to supply batteries, we're looking for funding, which the government promised, IF certain milestones were met, including getting firm orders to supply. They had a memorandum of understanding with Aston Martin and Lotus, not orders, and not volume.

lixy

This is so disappointing - so much for the 'levelling -up' agenda.

There did seem to be some optimism that another investor will be found when I saw this on the BBC news last night, but it seems a bit of a forlorn hope to me.

Probably Chinese investors. They seem to be the ones who can print money

It is a fact that 3/4 of new businesses fail within 3 yrs so the risk is considerable, many that continue do at a very low level, the loss to the individual, is usually much more than a large company failure with corporate shareholders.

Innovation always involves some amount of risk. We would never had vaccinations or penicillin, and so many other medicines or modern inventions otherwise.

In this case, I am not sure of all the facts.

Innovation is much more likely to succeed when so many countries work together to fund projects for all the brightest in all those countries.

The UK is now cut out from such funding and such cooperation. Sadly.

Nope. Paywall.

Were you able to read the FT article MaizieD? I was, but now it's behind the paywall. Maybe you're just allowed one article, and once only...

Thanks for that volver.

I really must subscribe to the FT; they always seem to be looking at angles that no-one else does and it's frustrating when it's all behind a paywall.

I'm all for investment innovation but not when you are putting all your eggs in one basket with people who don't know anything about the industry.

Absolutely.

I'm all for the state funding research and development, but not in the absence of information and expertise.

www.ft.com/content/7cd57531-1c54-4d32-955c-d185dcea0621

This is an excellent article, from only 4 months ago.

It seems we can't find anything about the technology because they are keeping it secret. Maybe understandably, because they thought it was their USP. Sadly they didn't let any of their potential customers know either and they had never produced anything that worked. They had managed to get funding and grants (from the government) without any viable business plan or actual business at all - one quote in the article says they were just "smoke and mirrors".

I'm all for investment innovation but not when you are putting all your eggs in one basket with people who don't know anything about the industry.

MaizieD

Katie59

www.express.co.uk/news/science/1723018/tesla-jlr-northvolt-britishvolt-ev-gigafactory-blyth-northumberland

This is more interesting, JLR are really struggling and making big losses in the last few years a link up with Tesla would provide the capital they need and also allow Tesla to move “upmarket”. TATA the owners of JLR will breathe a sigh of relief, the uncertainty around Musk being unpredictable is very much a caution and I won’t believe it until it happens

Very interesting Katie59, but where is the link that backs up your assertion that it was 'unproven technology' that caused the lack of investors?

It was quote I had previously seen but can’t find again, at the end of the day nobody had the confidence to sign up and they are dead. I hope the site finds a useful occupiers quickly.

volver

Of course we need innovation, but nobody is going to invest in a company that can't be confident about its product actually working, if a whole industry depends on it.

Anyway, I'm surmising at the moment. But I can rattle on about innovation for hours. I'll try not to. 😁

I'd be glad if you could find anything relevant, volver. I had a look, but couldn't find any mention of the technology, proven or otherwise.

But I know my search skills are not brilliant.

So far, there seems to be two stories

1) People are very reluctant to invest in the UK because government has no coherent industrial policy. This one is widely mentioned.

2) The 'unproven technology' story. Not mentioned at all in anything I've read.

Of course we need innovation, but nobody is going to invest in a company that can't be confident about its product actually working, if a whole industry depends on it.

Anyway, I'm surmising at the moment. But I can rattle on about innovation for hours. I'll try not to. 😁

All innovation, which finds solutions for our difficult future, are 'unproven technology' - all 'proven technology' had to be invented at some point, with wobbly bits on the way.

Our future relies on innovation, not old proven technology. And the loss of innovation, especially pan-European, with massive such projects financed by the EU, and with innovative and hugely clever experts from all over the EU working on projects together- is probably the most important and destructive post Brexit loss.

We are not going to solve climate change with 'proven' technology.

Let us know.

It doesn't sound as simple as it was at first reading.

I've also seen the quote about it being unproven technology, somewhere. I am going to have a look again this afternoon :-)

I get the impression that it is new technology, that they were trying to develop it all alone without any input from people who know about batteries, and that they couldn't get investment for many reasons.

I don't think they would have got support from the Dragons!!

Katie59

www.express.co.uk/news/science/1723018/tesla-jlr-northvolt-britishvolt-ev-gigafactory-blyth-northumberland

This is more interesting, JLR are really struggling and making big losses in the last few years a link up with Tesla would provide the capital they need and also allow Tesla to move “upmarket”. TATA the owners of JLR will breathe a sigh of relief, the uncertainty around Musk being unpredictable is very much a caution and I won’t believe it until it happens

Very interesting Katie59, but where is the link that backs up your assertion that it was 'unproven technology' that caused the lack of investors?

www.express.co.uk/news/science/1723018/tesla-jlr-northvolt-britishvolt-ev-gigafactory-blyth-northumberland

This is more interesting, JLR are really struggling and making big losses in the last few years a link up with Tesla would provide the capital they need and also allow Tesla to move “upmarket”. TATA the owners of JLR will breathe a sigh of relief, the uncertainty around Musk being unpredictable is very much a caution and I won’t believe it until it happens

The collapse of UK car battery start-up Britishvolt is because of Brexit, the former leader of the Conservatives Lord Hague has said.

The Tory peer blamed the UK’s decision to leave the EU for the company’s failure to secure enough private investment to develop a gigafactory in the North East to supply batteries for the UK’s electric vehicle market.

Lord Hague said the bankruptcy was “part of the damage” of Brexit, adding it was “very concerning”.

Report in today's "i" newspaper