(Reuters) – Accounting firm EY on Monday said it selected Scale Facilitation Partners and its Australian subsidiary Recharge Industries as the preferred bidder to buy struggling UK startup Britishvolt out of administration.
EY’s restructuring arm EY-Parthenon were appointed administrators of Britishvolt in January after the company struggled to raise funds for a major electric vehicle battery factory in northern England and stay afloat.
The deal was expected to be completed within the next seven days, EY said in a statement on Monday.
Britishvolt, Recharge Industries and Scale Facilitation did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
Britishvolt has been in talks with a consortium of investors about selling a majority stake in the company, the company said earlier this month, without disclosing any names.
The British government, under former prime minister Boris Johnson, had touted Britishvolt’s project as a major milestone toward building an EV industry as the country heads toward a ban on combustion engine cars in 2030.
But as of last summer, Britishvolt said it had only raised around 200 million pounds and pushed back its production timeline citing “difficult external economic headwinds.”
While Britishvolt is small, the site that it owns at Blyth is considered by industry experts to be Britain’s best “shovel-ready” location for a battery factory, with plenty of renewable power available.
Its failure to raise sufficient funds was seen as a step back for Britain’s car sector at a time when industry officials and experts see domestic EV battery plants as essential to keep UK car production from shifting to mainland Europe.
(Reporting by Sneha Bhowmik in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
