By Paul Homewood
So much for all the green jobs promised:
British battery start-up Britishvolt has gone into administration, with the majority of its 300 employees laid off immediately.
Employees were briefed on the news at an all-employee meeting on Tuesday morning.
The company has planned to build a huge factory for the production of electric car batteries in Northumberland and is part of a long-term vision to boost UK manufacturing.
But its board is said to have decided on Monday that there is no viable bid to keep the company alive.
Industry experts say the UK will need several battery factories to support the future of UK car manufacturing as petrol and diesel engines will be phased out over the next decade.
The UK currently has only one Chinese-owned factory next to the Nissan plant in Sunderland, while 35 are planned or under construction in the EU.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64303149
The root cause of this collapse is that the plant will be at a loss for several years, until the electric vehicle market matures enough to supply a full order book. Investors are simply not willing to accept this.
Certainly high energy costs and competition from China for both batteries and cars are also points of concern.
Meanwhile, our automakers will soon have to start shutting down their engine plants, as 2030 approaches, with job losses inevitable.
This whole story is a reminder that you don’t create jobs through government orders. The promise of hundreds of thousands of green jobs is an illusion.
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