Britishvolt ‘moved too fast’, says former boss Lars Carlstrom
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Britishvolt ‘started too fast’, says former boss after company rescued from collapse after securing last-minute financing line
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Criticism: Lars Carlstrom, who stepped down as Britishvolt chairman in December 2020, said the right people may not be in charge
The former Britishvolt boss has turned against current management after the company narrowly avoided collapse by securing a financing lifeline at the last minute.
Lars Carlstrom, who stepped down as chairman in December 2020, questioned whether the right people were responsible for the project, which was “accelerating too quickly with too many people on board.”
The former Britishvolt boss has turned against current management after the company narrowly averted its collapse by getting a lifeline for financing at the last minute.
He said, “We would probably have seen a more prosperous project if some of the things had been done differently.”
His comments came after Britishvolt received an 11-hour package from investors to keep it afloat after reports emerged that it was about to fall into administration, putting some 300 jobs in the UK at risk.
The company has developed Britain’s largest electric vehicle battery factory in Blyth, Northumberland, with a £3.8 billion ‘giga factory’ that would employ up to 3,000 people by the time it was fully operational.
But the group struggled amid delays and the resignation of co-founder and then-boss Orral Nadjari in August. It continued to scramble for emergency funding to avoid going bankrupt.
Things got worse after ministers scrapped plans to inject £100m into the company when it discovered the money would be used to prop it up rather than build the Blyth factory.
Speaking to the BBC Today programme, Carlstrom said the government could have had ‘a very good return’ on its investment in Britishvolt, but admitted he disagreed with the way the company was run.
He quit after it emerged that he had been convicted of tax fraud in Sweden in the 1990s, although he claimed the main reason he left was due to disagreements over how the company should be run.
He said: ‘There are some shortcomings and the reason for my departure was that we could not agree.
“There were collaboration issues and we couldn’t agree on how to handle this properly.”
Carlstrom added that someone had “fuelled” the news of his tax conviction to “make my exit smoother and faster.”
Britishvolt was founded in 2019 to make batteries for electric cars and to fuel a green energy revolution in Britain.
The plans for Blyth were hailed by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a “levelling opportunity.”
Funding of £100m from the government allowed the company to raise a further £1.7bn.
But with the future in doubt, potential buyers are circling the factory – considered to be one of the best battery production sites in Europe thanks to its rail and sea connections and access to clean energy.