2023-07-19 11:02:28
By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 3 hours ago, Updated 50 minutes ago
Tata had chosen between a site in the southwest of England and a site in Spain to supply a new range of electric vehicles. Danish Siddiqui / REUTERS
The project should create nearly 4,000 jobs for the sector, according to the British authorities.
The United Kingdom has won the investment of the Indian giant Tata, owner of the manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, in a giga-factory of electric batteries in “more than 4 billion poundswhich will accelerate the decarbonization of its automotive industry. This project represents a political victory for Downing Street, which had been negotiating for nine months with Tata to win this investment, notably once morest Spain. The factory should generate “up to 4,000 new direct jobs and thousands more in the extended supply chain“, Specifies the press release from the Ministry of Enterprise. The new “giga-factorywith a capacity of 40 Gigawatt hours, will beone of the largest in Europe“, continues the press release.
In March, the business daily FT (Financial Times) wrote that Tata Motors had asked for half a billion pounds (575 million euros) in aid from the United Kingdom to build its battery factory there, failing which it might choose the Iberian Peninsula. The factory is to be built in Bridgewater, south-west England, and production is due to start there in 2026.”It is expected to supply almost half of the battery production the country needs by 2030, which will give a big boost to the UK’s transition to zero-emission vehiclesof CO2, estimates the government in its press release.
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A “mark of recognition”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed a “recognition of the vigor of our automotive industry». «We can be incredibly proud that Britain has been chosen for Tata Group’s first gigafactory outside India.“, he added. “This is probably the biggest investment ever injected into this country’s auto industry.“, added the Minister of Energy Grant Shapps on Sky News.
Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran said in the statement that the Indian conglomerate “is strongly committed to a sustainable futureand notes that the new factory willsupply future models of Jaguar Land Rover with electric batteries (…) with the potential to also supply other manufacturers“. The environmental NGO Greenpeace hailed “an important moment for the automotive industry in the UK“, Who “shows that the government has finally started in the international race for clean technologies, while others are already at full speed».
She is now calling on Downing Street to “stick to its laudable goal of phasing out petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030, and signing the regulations for it“. For its part, the Unite union points out that “the United States and Europe have clear and proactive plans for jobs and investmentand asks the British government toimplement a long-term industrial strategy“. The British Faraday University Center, which specializes in the country’s electrification, points out on its website that “by 2030, around 100 Gigawatt hours of supply will be needed in the UK to meet battery demand for» the vehicles, i.e. the «equivalent of 5 giga-factories, each operating with a capacity of 20 Gigawatt hours per year».
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By 2040 these needs should rise to 200 Gwh, or the equivalent of 10 gigafactories, he adds, stressing the need for the country to accelerate its infrastructure projects. The Chinese Envision AESC is already building with the Japanese manufacturer Nissan a “giga-factoryin Sunderland, in the northeast of the country, a project announced with great fanfare two years ago. The British company Britishvolt, dedicated to the construction of a vast factory of batteries for electric cars, for its part went bankrupt before being bought by the Australian Recharge for an undisclosed sum.
At the end of June, the CCC, the independent body responsible for advising Downing Street on the transition to carbon neutrality, deplored the “disturbing slownessof the pace of energy transition in the UK. He called on the government to take actionbolder» and to «remake the climate priority”.
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