The abandoned £3.8bn gigafactory site has been sold, dealing a blow to the UK electric car industry.
US private equity giant Blackstone has agreed to buy the 235-acre Northumberland site, which it plans to develop into one of Europe’s largest data centres.
Professor David Bailey, a car industry expert at the University of Birmingham business school, described it as a “missed opportunity for battery manufacturing in the UK”.
The deal extinguishes any hopes that the site will become a key part of the transition from gasoline and diesel car manufacturing to electric.
Gigafactories make batteries for electric cars and Britain needs more if it is to compete in an era when the assembly lines that today produce internal combustion engines become obsolete.
Sold: Plans for a giant electric car battery factory on a disused site in Blyth, Northumberland (pictured), were abandoned when Britishvolt, the company behind the project, collapsed.
Council officials say plans for a data center at the Northumberland site could create more than 1,600 jobs.
The site, formerly home to Blyth Power Station, had been considered ideal for a gigafactory by car industry experts.
Plans to build one were underway until Britishvolt, the company behind the project, collapsed last year.
Australian company Recharge Industries subsequently took control of the business, but faced a winding-up petition last month.
The official receivers of business turnaround specialist Begbies Traynor yesterday announced the sale of the site to Blackstone for an undisclosed sum.
Bob Maxwell, of Begbies Traynor, said: “Coming from a difficult situation, the future sale will ensure a very bright future for the site.”
But Bailey said: ‘The site is ideal to build a gigafactory on the site of the former Blyth power station.
‘It has enough infrastructure for an energy-intensive battery plant and a rail link to the port terminal, ideal for importing components and exporting batteries.
Losing them to other uses is truly a missed opportunity for UK battery manufacturing as we will need more gigafactories to support UK car production.”
Industry figures suggest Britain will need gigafactory capacity of 60-90 GWh by 2030 to meet the target of producing one million electric vehicles a year.
Capacity now stands at 2 GWh, coming from the Envision plant in Sunderland.
Britishvolt’s gigafactory could have added 38 GWh to that total. However, plans for Envision’s expansion to 12 GWh and a new 40 GWh site to be built by Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata should still take UK capacity to 52 GWh by 2026.