Business Secretary visits Aston Martin after announcing £9 million to drive innovation in auto tech industry

By Peter Davison

26 October 2023

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Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch at Aston Martin (Image credit: Department for Business and Trade)

Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch has visited Aston Martin’s HQ in Warwickshire, where she met with apprentices and senior leaders and learnt more about the company’s high-performance electrification strategy.

The visit comes after the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) announced almost £9 million in government funding through the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) to develop Aston Martin’s EV technology - supporting over 2,500 local jobs and helping to grow the local economy.

The project will help accelerate the development of a luxury battery EV platform to drive forward a route to net zero, including vehicle light weighting, a digital toolchain and electrification training.

The Government is also working with industry via the Automotive Transformation Fund to unlock investment in an internationally competitive EV supply chain.

The ATF has delivered significant results, including Tata’s recent announcement of over £4 billion to build a new gigafactory in the UK. Offers made to date under the ATF are expected to leverage more than £6 billion in private investment.

This follows a previous £1 billion investment in Sunderland by Nissan and Envision AESC, £600 million investment by BMW to transform the Oxford MINI plant, £380 million investment in Halewood by Ford, £100 million in electric van production at Stellantis in Ellesmere Port, and £60 million in Hertfordshire by Johnson Matthey.

Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch said: "Aston Martin is one of the UK’s most well-renowned brands, most successful exporters, and I was delighted to visit their HQ in Warwickshire today and see the fantastic work that goes on here.

"The Government is backing our automotive sector, as can be seen with our recent APC award to Aston Martin and others, to ensure we secure high-quality jobs and investment across the UK and develop a resilient and prosperous car industry for the future."

Luxury brands are a unique strength in the UK’s auto sector, with 75-90 percent of Aston Martin’s vehicles exported.

During the visit the Business Secretary praised Aston Martin for flying the flag for British luxury car exports overseas and helping to drive innovation in UK advanced engineering.

Michael Straughan, Executive Consultant to Aston Martin’s CEO said: "We were honoured to welcome the Business Secretary to Gaydon today, providing a valuable opportunity to showcase the huge potential of the UK’s luxury car industry and outline our high-performance electrification strategy, which has been boosted by funding from the APC.

"As a growing, export-led business, Aston Martin is proud to serve as flagbearer for British advanced engineering and is passionate about working with the government to maximise opportunities for economic growth and to support high quality employment.”

Maintaining a competitive business environment to stimulate growth and productivity is critical to the future of UK manufacturing and we will take decisive action to ensure future investment in zero emission vehicle manufacturing.

We already have a proven track record of backing UK automotive, including a longstanding and comprehensive programme of support featuring the ATF, the APC, Faraday Battery Challenge and Driving the Electric Revolution.

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The APC collaborates with UK Government, the automotive industry and academia to accelerate the industrialisation of technologies, supporting the transition to deliver net-zero emission vehicles. Government and industry have jointly invested more than £1.4 billion in automotive R&D via the APC.

Since its foundation in 2013 the APC, through government, has funded 261 low-carbon projects involving 480 partners, working with companies of all sizes, and will have helped to create or safeguard over 58,000 jobs in the UK.

The technologies developed in these projects are projected to save over 400 million tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of removing the lifetime emissions from 16.1 million cars.

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.