More woes for Britishvolt

RECHARGE INDUSTRIES, Britishvolt’s new owner, could face legal proceedings over an ex-employee’s unpaid wages.

According to the Financial Times (FT), the Australian company, which acquired  Britishvolt last January, was served with a statutory demand to pay the wages.

If Recharge Industries does not settle within three weeks, the former employee can take further legal action and launch bankruptcy proceedings against the company, the FT said.

Staff members had not been paid for months, another employee said.

Britishvolt, now headed by Australian businessman David Collard, was founded four years ago and planned a £3.8 billion (€4.35 billion) gigafactory in Blyth (Northumberland) to supply batteries for UK-built electric vehicles.

The company could have counted on £100 million (€114.5 million) in conditional funding from the UK government but went into administration after running out of cash. Most of its 300 staff were made redundant.

At the time, professional services group EY who were brought in as administrators, said the company had entered failed owing to “insufficient equity investment for both the ongoing research it was undertaking and the development of its sites in the Midlands and the north-east of England.”

The company’s management had been negotiating with potential investors including existing investors who were anxious to prevent the value of their holdings from being wiped out.  Also in the running at one point was a little-known Indonesia-linked oil and gas group with limited experience in manufacturing.

In the event, EY chose Recharge Industries as the most suitable buyer of the company in the administration process. The Australian startup bought Britishvolt for £8.6 (€9.8 million) in February, making an initial payment of £6.1 million (€6.98 million).

In August,  EY announced that the final payment was “unpaid and overdue”, with Recharge Industries in default of the business sale agreement.

Scale Facilitation, the New York-based parent company of Recharge Industries, denied defaulting on the deal.