Australian police raid Britishvolt buyer’s office
The future of UK battery making has faced another roadblock after Australian authorities raided the office of Britishvolt’s buyer.
Australian entrepreneur David Collard purchased the collapsed battery manufacturer out of administration in February with his firm Recharge Industries, which is ultimately owned by US investment company Scale Facilitation.
Police raided the Australian shared offices of Scale Facilitation and another business owned by Collard – SaniteX, over alleged tax fraud on Friday.
According to The Australian, which first reported on the raid, staff at Scale Facilitation had gone unpaid in recent weeks.
Britishvolt was named a “pioneering” firm by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It went into administration in January, after failing to secure sufficient equity investment for both the ongoing research it was undertaking and the development of a £200m site in the Midlands and a £3.8bn gigafactory in the North East of England.
The new owners were initially given a deadline of March 31 to finalise and pay for the site in Northumberland. The date was extended with the firm hoping to have raised funds in the next couple of weeks.
When the deal was made in February, Collard said to the BBC: “Anyone will take free money but at the end of the day what we want is bi-partisan support and we have that in Australia and the US.”
He added that he hoped the project would create up to 8,000 jobs on site and in the supply chain, with work on the “shovel ready” site that could begin in six to 12 months.
