Just a day after the collapse of Britishvolt and its plan for a gigafactory producing batteries for EVs, Andrew Forrest, founder of Australian iron ore firm Fortescue, told Sky News that he was building a new advanced battery plant in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, to make batteries and fuel cells for HGVs.
Forrest said he was expanding operations at WAE Technologies, the technical offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team, which he bought last year.
Speaking on the fringes of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Forrest said: “We invested heavily in British technology, British knowhow and British work ethic last year. But then we’ve said: ‘Listen, it’s great you’ve got the most advanced, innovative prototype batteries in the world… but we’ve got to get into manufacturing’. So last year, we started building a large factory in Kidlington. We’ll open it in April. It will create hundreds and hundreds of new British jobs. And that’s only the start. I want to expand it from there and I want to take that technology to Australia, to North America. I want to really stop the British brain drain and bring the smartest British engineers… home.”
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