WAGE THEFT
Recharge Industries: Britishvolt buyer failed to pay UK staff for months
BRITISHVOLTAn Australian firm which bought the collapsed battery maker Britishvolt has failed to pay its UK staff for the last four months, the BBC has learned.
Recharge Industries took control of Britishvolt after it went into administration in January.
The takeover has not gone smoothly, with some £2.5m of the purchase price still unpaid months after it was due.
However, sources within Recharge Industries insist a deal with a new investor is imminent.
Britishvolt was a start-up with big ambitions. It wanted to build a £4bn "gigafactory" to supply battery packs for a new generation of electric cars.
The plant was to have been built on the site of an old power station near Blyth in Northumberland.
It was seen as an ideal location, with a deepwater port and good access to transport links.
But the venture ran out of money, and fell into administration earlier this year.
After examining a number of bids, administrators at EY agreed to sell Britishvolt's assets to Recharge Industries.
The company agreed to pay £8.57m. Of this, EY says £6.1m was received on initial completion of the transaction.
The remainder, however, is still outstanding.
While most of Britishvolt's staff were made redundant after the company entered administration, 26 were kept on.
The BBC has been told by several sources that Recharge Industries stopped paying them in July. More than half have since left the company as a result.
Pension commitments have not been met since the takeover, they say.
Staff also complain that they have been locked out of computer systems and are unable to work, because an IT contractor has not been paid.
Recharge Industries is a start-up business owned by Scale Facilitation, a New York-based investment firm run by financier David Collard.
David Collard has not commented on the claims.
Recharge Industries plans to use the Blyth site to build vehicle batteries for the Australian military.
But simply to get control of the land, it not only needs to give the remaining £2.47m to EY, but also needs to raise another £11m to pay property investor Katch, which has a financial claim to the site.
Sources within Recharge Industries insist funding from a new investor is imminent and that will enable the to deal to go forward by the middle of next week.
But Britishvolt employees seem to have little confidence this will happen.
"We've heard this time and time again since August", said one.
"He tells us there's an investor waiting. But he can't tell us who it is. It's always the same story".
Another described Mr Collard's claims as "BS".
David Collard insists he can yet prove his many doubters wrong but he has a lot of work to do - and quickly.
Another employee suggested staff were prepared to give the entrepreneur time to secure the new investment.
BRITISHVOLTIt is clear that Recharge Industries has struggled to obtain the funding it needs.
Part of that can be attributed to the impact of a tax raid by Australian federal police on the local offices of Scale Facilitation.
At the time of the raid in June, sources close to Mr Collard, who is a former partner at accountancy giant PwC, said that the tax raid is due to a misunderstanding of the interaction between US and Australian tax filings and that all parties were co-operating.
Scale Facilitation denied any wrongdoing.
Sources have acknowledged though that this made investors deeply wary of becoming involved with the Britishvolt project.
Another key problem has been a buyback clause held by Northumberland County Council, the original owner of the land.
This would allow it to repurchase the Blyth site if substantial progress has not been made on developing it by December 2024.
The BBC understands there are serious doubts at the top of Northumberland County Council that Mr Collard has the financial and industry pedigree to deliver on a project they hope will provide thousands of jobs directly and in the supply chain.
Meanwhile, EY has defended its own role in the affair. It insists that the £6.1m already received from Recharge Industries was "materially above the next best alternative, deliverable offer received by the Joint Administrators".
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