After weeks of anticipation, Tata Group, parent company of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), has formally announced plans to construct a £4.0Bn (US$5.14Bn) gigafactory in Somerset in the UK. As part of this investment, the UK government is expected to provide subsidies for the project. It is hoped by the UK government that the factory will provide around 4,000 jobs in the region, as well as providing more indirectly via the development of a wider UK battery and battery material supply chain.

The construction of the gigafactory is part of a wider plan by Tata Group to accelerate JLR’s transition to electric vehicles as well as supply cells to the broader market, with the gigafactory aiming to produce 40GWh of EV batteries per annum from 2026, making it one of the largest battery production sites in Europe. The site will be ‘Intellectual property-heavy’ with plans to produce a mix of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for Tata’s own EVs and nickel, manganese, and cobalt (NMC) batteries for JLR and the wider Tata fleet. This announcement, along with the recent news that French giant Imerys’ will invest in British Lithium, may go some way to reinvigorate hopes in the UK’s battery materials sector.

However, the question of where the battery materials feeding this gigafactory come from remains to be answered. Just examining the lithium requirements of the proposed gigafactory, Project Blue estimates that the 40GWh factory will require 28.4kt of lithium chemicals in lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) form, or 1.3% of total worldwide production by 2030. With only 45.6kt LCE production expected to be online in Europe by 2030, and with competition from other European gigafactories for the same material, Tata Group will be competing in a tight market for lithium chemicals. While the question of how to meet the factory’s material demands is still to be answered, this new investment, backed by Tata Group and the UK Government, recharges the hope for British-made batteries and investment in the EV supply chain, which is yet to keep up with Europe and America’s momentum.

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