The Tata Group has revealed that Europe’s largest EV battery facility will be built in Bridgewater, Somerset, with building slated to begin soon and battery manufacturing beginning in 2026.
The £4 billion facility, backed by £500 million of UK government funding, will be located at the 620-acre Gravity Smart Campus, the site of a former Royal Ordnance factory that made bombs during World War Two.
The site has been linked to various car and battery manufacturers in the past and was already widely understood to be where Tata would break ground in the coming months. The confirmation comes seven months after JLR’s parent company selected the UK as the base for its European gigafactory.
Tata’s first battery factory outside of its Indian home market will be run by subsidiary Agratas and, with an eventual capacity of 40GWh, will be one of the largest such facilities in Europe. That capacity alone is just under half of what the UK needs in order to cater to projected local electric vehicle production by 2030.
The factory, which will create 4000 jobs, will initially make batteries for Tata Motors and JLR (formerly Jaguar Land Rover) – brands that sit under the Tata Group umbrella – before later expanding to produce cells for different applications, such as commercial vehicles, two-wheelers and energy storage solutions.
Agratas CEO Tom Flack, said, “We care deeply about the communities we operate in.”
Tata will also be looking at future-proofing its factory, working with local schools and colleges, as well as the wider Gravity Smart Campus, to offer training courses to get people interested in engineering and train workers. Cells made at the factory will be in the rectangular prismatic format, rather than the cylindrical shape preferred by BMW and Tesla, and Tata has already said that the cell chemistry can be adapted and changed as new advancements are made.
Flack, said, “Our multi-billion-pound investment will bring state-of-the-art technology to Somerset, helping to supercharge Britain’s transition to electric mobility whilst creating thousands of jobs in the process.”
Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, repeated Flack’s comments,“Confirmation that Somerset will be home to a new multi-billion-pound EV battery manufacturing facility, with construction starting this spring, is good news for the locality, the industry and wider UK economy.”
Hawes, added, “Thousands of new, cutting-edge jobs will be created, and as the global sector moves swiftly to electrification, producing batteries in Britain is critical to the next generation of UK automotive manufacturing.”
Tata’s vote of confidence in the UK brings reassurance after a long period of uncertainty around the British industry’s preparedness for the EV era. However, questions still remain over whether the country will be able to build enough batteries to sustain competitive levels of EV production.