High-powered deal brings all-electric commercial vehicle firm to Warwickshire

Published by

Peter Davison

Ben Anstey, Director of Electrical Systems and Digital Experience at Volta Trucks (left) with Simon Hain, Director at ehB Reeves.

A disruptive commercial vehicle manufacturer and services provider in the fledgling electric truck market has set up a UK base of operations in Warwickshire as part of its plans for expansion.

Volta Trucks has taken over around half of the American Barns office development in Banbury Road, Warwick, to support the engineering and production of the Volta Zero, the world’s first purpose-built all-electric 16-tonne commercial vehicle designed for last-mile urban logistics.

Volta Trucks has around 20 members of staff permanently based at the site with a further 26 hot desk areas and meeting rooms that are in continuous use.

It follows a period of growth for the brand, which has also seen Volta Trucks officially open its first service and maintenance hub in Tottenham, North London ahead of the first customer vehicles to start operating in the UK.

Volta Trucks was formed in 2019 in Sweden by co-founders Carl-Magnus Norden and Kjell Walöen. It is headquartered in Stockholm, however, most of its business and engineering operations are undertaken in the UK.

The deal to take over the space at American Barns, an extensive conversion of unusual brick farm buildings, was negotiated by Leamington-based commercial property experts ehB Reeves.

Ben Anstey, Director of Electrical Systems and Digital Experience at Volta Trucks, said: “Warwick’s central location is ideal for our engineering and business needs and is part of our UK expansion.

“The all-electric Volta Zero has been designed from the ground up to reduce the environmental impact of commercial deliveries in city centres with safety and people at the heart of everything we do.

"The vital work taking place in Warwick will play a huge part in this, as we accelerate the industry to transition towards electric commercial fleets and pave the way for a cleaner, healthier and more sustainable future for us all.”

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Simon Hain, director at ehB Reeves, said: “It’s a huge coup for Warwickshire and the West Midlands region as a whole to have such a forward-thinking automotive firm on our patch, and we’re delighted to have played our part in making it happen.

“We’ve seen the introduction of an ultra-low emission zone in Birmingham, so we know the issue of reducing emissions is one the region is already taking steps to tackle. We hope having a company like Volta Trucks on our doorstep will help us to become a flag-bearer for cleaner and greener logistics.”

ehB Reeves enjoys a growing management portfolio in excess of £100 million and was ranked as the UK’s best-performing company for disposing of the highest percentage of its property portfolio in the NovaLoca Disposals Report 2020.

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.