News
Rolton Group Appointed as Consultants for UK's First Ever 'Gigaplant'
Battery Manufacturer Britishvolt announces the appointment of Rolton Group and Ridge as lead consultants who will collaborate with Pininfarina to create the UK’s first ‘Gigaplant’ in South Wales.
Manufacturer Britishvolt has announced the strengthening of its design team with the appointment of Rolton Group and Ridge. They will collaborate with Britishvolt and Italian design house Pininfarina, to design, engineer, and build the UK’s first battery Gigaplant at the former RAF base of Bro Tathan in South Wales.
The Gigaplant, which is planned to cover 2.5 million square feet, will produce green lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs). The new factory will be the result of an estimated £1.2 billion investment and will include a solar park for sustainable and low carbon production of batteries.
Multidiscipline Property and Construction Consultants Ridge and Partners LLP (Ridge) will provide Project Management, Design Management, Executive Architecture, Technical Coordination, and Digital Design. The Rolton Group will provide key engineering advice and technical expertise so that the Gigaplant is designed to deliver the lithium-ion batteries in an energy-efficient state-of-the-art building. The Ridge and Rolton Group collaboration will also be intrinsic in targeting a net-zero carbon manufacturing facility for Britishvolt.
Ridge employs over 600 people and has a rich, successful track record of managing, designing and delivering world-class facilities in the advanced manufacturing, research & development and motorsport sectors since the 1980s. In recent years, Ridge has delivered over 1million m2 of technical manufacturing facilities, and notably supported the new UK Battery Industrialisation Centre at Coventry from project inception through to completion. Ridge has unrivalled expertise in advanced manufacturing working for 19 Formula 1 teams, Airbus, Aston Martin, BMW, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, Prodrive, Rolls-Royce Plc and Xtrac amongst others. To work in this demanding sector for over 30 years, Ridge has continually innovated and kept pace with these world-class leading businesses and their technologies.
The Rolton Group is at the center of automotive manufacturing and energy provision for top brands including Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), Ford, Rolls Royce and BMW, providing engineering advice and design expertise on construction projects for 40 years. Rolton Group has an expansive range of successful, technical projects and has defined the Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy for JLR’s manufacturing, product creation and development centres whilst delivering building engineering design for manufacturing facilities from Aston Martin to BMW.
Britishvolt CEO, Orral Nadjari said: ‘Our mission is for the Gigaplant to begin supplying the automotive and energy industries with world-class batteries, powering the electric revolution. So, it’s essential that we hire world-class talent and forge leading partnerships to help us achieve our goal.
With these highly experienced new partners leading the construction phase we have the expertise to build and equip a ‘Gigaplant’ that will be transformative for UK car-making, the renewable energy industry and the entire British economy.
We already have momentum, working and deploying capital expenditure early in the process so that we can accurately assess the level of UK government support that will be required to enable us to move the project forwards.
We’re also working with agility and speed. Thanks to previous experience with the UK BIC plant, we have achieved more progress in the past five weeks than similar projects have done in six months.’
Contact
For more information please contact:
Louise Gill – Ridge
07712 899912
or
Chelsea Coltart – Rolton Group
07860658549
About Britishvolt
Britishvolt is Britain’s foremost investor in battery technologies. It is dedicated to supporting the future of electrified transportation and sustainable energy storage, producing world-leading lithium-ion battery technologies.
Britishvolt aims to establish the UK as the leading force in battery technology. It is working with leading partners and suppliers to achieve this because it is of paramount importance to the future of the UK automotive industry and the overall economic and industrial health of the UK.
The company believes that the UK is the right place for its investments because of the strength of its automotive and energy industry, its expertise and history of industrial and academic battery research and development.
2023 has been targeted as the start of production in Britain’s first Gigaplant in Wales, following the signing of an MOU with the Welsh Government. The Gigaplant is one of the largest-ever UK industrial investments, situated in 80+ hectares of green industrial park, a 200MW solar park, with a production capacity of up to 30 GWh.