Could North Somerset be home to major battery factory, at Coventry's expense?

The government is said to be in serious talks with Tata, the Indian owners of West Midlands-based Jaguar Land Rover, to build a giga-factory on a former Royal Ordnance site near Bridgwater.

According to reports, the Treasury has developed a multi million pound package of incentives to encourage Tata to invest in a gigafactory in the UK rather than Spain, it's other preferred location.

The location, an as-yet-to-be-built business park, called Gravity, is located just off Junction 23 of the M5 motorway, on the former Royal Ordnance Factory, which was finally closed by BAE Systems (which bought it from the government in the 1990s).

BAE Systems sold the 616-acre site to merchant bank Salamanca Group in 2017 which has plans to develop it into a business park.

If the talks between the government and Tata are successful, up to 9,000 jobs would be created. West of England Metro Mayor, Dan Norris, said swift action is needed to seal the deal.

However, another regional mayor, Andy Street of the West Midlands is more gloomy. There are plans to build a West Midlands Gigafactory at Coventry Airport but he said there were "technical aspects" of that site which had not met the firm's criteria.

Last year The West Midlands Gigafactory, a public private joint venture between Coventry City Council and Coventry Airport Ltd, said it was in advanced discussions with global battery manufacturers to occupy the site which can be production ready from 2025 to begin supplying high-tech batteries for electric vehicles. At full capacity it could create up to 6,000 direct jobs, with thousands more in the supply chain.

Read more about the West Midlands Gigafactory: West Midlands Gigafactory appoints former Lotus director to spearhead global strategy

Those behind plans to build the West Midlands Gigafactory say it is the only site in the UK with planning permission in place for a Gigafactory with capacity for 60GWh per annum and has the potential to become Britain’s largest battery manufacturing facility.

The site is near the UK’s manufacturing industry and its established supply chain.

A potential gigafactory in Somerset is also well located. It's close Bristol Port and the M4 and M5 motorways.

Over the next decade, the automotive industry will go through the most fundamental transformation since its creation – and the UK risks falling behind according to The UK's Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (the SMMT).

In its Full Throttle Report, The SMMT said "In principle, the UK’s engineering heritage and strengths in digital and technology position it well for a relative advantage in the future automotive industry. However, without underlying base facilities such as domestic battery production and an electrified supply chain in the UK, industry could easily underperform its potential – there is already a growing gap with less generous subsidy support in the UK compared to other destinations for investment."

It recommends that the UK needs to build 60 GWh of gigafactory supply by 2030, ensuring the country has ample battery supply to maintain current production volume, and offers significantly more generous incentives for business investment.  Under this scenario, GVA and jobs return to a trajectory of steady growth. That would support the annual assembly of one million new cars, below today’s 1.3m capacity. 

Its worst case scenario would be that the UK only builds one additional gigafactory, leaving total supply under 15 GWh and so fails to make the transition away from internal combustion engies. As a result, around 90,000 jobs would lost, with the majority of these concentrated outside of London and the South East, further increasing regional inequality.

According to Car Magazine, the UK currently has 1.7GWh supplying Nissan Leaf production in Sunderland, and Nissan, its supplier, leading global battery technology company Envision-AESC and the government have earmarked a £1 billion investment to boost capacity to 9GWh by the middle of the 2020s. A further £1.8 billion could take the Gigafactory up to 25GWh by 2030.