Tata Firm will make a vital facility with the Indian conglomerate set to invest more than £4 billion in a project

July 20, 2023: The Tata firm will create a powerful facility for making electric car batteries in the U.K., with the Indian conglomerate set to invest more than £5 billion in the project.

The news means substantial growth for the U.K.’s plans to secure its supply of E.V. batteries as it moves away from gasoline and diesel vehicles.

On Wednesday, the U.K. government stated that the site would create as many as 4,000 direct jobs and provide Jaguar Land Rover with batteries. Other clients in the U.K. and Europe are also being eyed.

The government said the factory would generate thousands of jobs further down the supply chain in critical raw minerals and battery materials sectors.

“This investment will be crucial to boosting the U.K.’s battery manufacturing capacity needed to support the electric vehicle industry in the long term,” the government said.

“With an initial work of 40GWh, it will also provide almost half of the battery production that the Faraday Institution estimates the U.K. will need by 2030,” it added.

The gigafactory will be one of Europe’s largest. The aim is for the presentation to start in 2026. So-called gigafactories are facilities that produce batteries for electric vehicles on a large scale. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been widely credited as coining the term.

It’s been widely noted that the U.K. will provide Tata with significant subsidies for the project. The government said details of its support to Tata Sons would be “published in due course as part of our regular transparency data.

On Wednesday morning, Grant Shapps, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, said the news represented “certainly the biggest U.K. car investment for 40 years” and “a big vote of confidence in the British economy.”

“This is a shot in the arm for the U.K. automotive industry, our economy, and British manufacturing jobs, demonstrating the country is open for business and electric vehicle production,” Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said.

“It comes at a critical moment, with the global industry transitioning at pace to electrification,” he added.