Blackstone’s plans for a knowledge center will create thousands of jobs. Promised commissioning of Northumberland battery plant failed
The north-east England site, which was once owned by bankrupt battery company Britishvolt, will be bought for £110 million through an American personal equity firm, which plans to build one of Europe’s largest knowledge centres.
The Blackstone group will buy the 95-hectare site near Cambois in Northumberland to tap into its links with renewable energy, according to managers at one of the Britishvolt companies.
The administrators did not disclose how much they paid for the site, but Northumberland County Council documents show the local authority will set up a “growth and investment endowment” of £110 million as a result of the deal.
Britishvolt burst onto the scene in 2019, promising to build batteries to power British electric cars. The company won the backing of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a promise of £100 million in subsidies, before collapsing in early 2023.
The site once housed Blyth Power Station, a pair of coal-fired units. Recipients Bob Maxwell and Julian Pitts of the Begbies Traynor Group said Blackstone plans to turn the site into “one of the largest knowledge centres in Western Europe”.
Analysts expect the demand for knowledge centers to continue to grow as families and businesses transmit and send more virtual content and information, and the demand for cloud web installations and synthetic intelligence also increases.
The deal will secure the long-term lease of a gigantic piece of land on a relatively disadvantaged domain of the UK. It will also make it possible to use local green energy production, adding offshore wind energy. However, it will most likely also put an end to the dream of securing thousands of jobs at the site, which was the council’s hope. He had retained the option to buy the site for £4 million, the value paid through Britishvolt, if the owners failed to build a gigafactory.
The new company had promised to create up to 3,000 jobs in the region with an ambitious plan to build a second “gigafactory” for car batteries in north-east England, which would rival China’s AESC factory in Sunderland. of millions of pounds of investment from 100 FTSE corporations Ashtead and Glencore, as well as Tritax, an asset investment arm of asset manager abrdn.
However, the task failed because Britishvolt spent a large amount of cash on its own battery generation and failed to secure the orders it needed to unlock more funds. Construction of the site has begun, however, The Guardian revealed that it was put on “life support”. ” in the summer of 2022.
Sign up to do business today
Get ready for the workday – we’ll bring you all the economic news and research you want every morning.
After the Promotion
Commenting on the Blackstone deal, Maxwell of Begbies Traynor said: “Despite a challenging situation, the upcoming sale will ensure a very bright future for the site. This transaction ensures that a well-funded and reputable new owner will bring the businesses and jobs to the site they deserve, and will be a huge boost for the entire region.
“Its scale and location make it an ideal location for a European knowledge hub, and the complex plans deserve to release the site from an entire group of tech industries in the northeast. “