During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, defence supplier BAE Systems closed its last UK munitions plants in Bridgwater and Chorley, Lancashire, as it cut costs in its global operations. In an April 2007 parliamentary debate, local politicians from the affected communities were seething that the closures meant job losses and the end of the UK’s domestic munitions production capacity.

“Closing our arms factory would be a bitter blow to Bridgwater and Chorley and is a steep price for our national security,” said Ian Liddell-Grainger, the former MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset. After six decades of supplying Britain’s armed forces, the factory closures meant the UK would have to import its munitions from abroad.

Today, the site near Bridgwater is set to be home to manufacturing of another type of strategic product. Agratas, the global battery business of India’s Tata Group, plans to build a gigafactory on the former munitions site. It aims to produce up to 40 gigawatt hours of batteries and create 4000 new jobs by the early 2030s. The UK government, under former prime minister Rishi Sunak, offered Tata Group an incentive package worth at least £500m for the project, according to the Financial Times.

Given Agratas’s project accounts for the majority of the UK’s domestic battery production pipeline by 2030, it has breathed new life into the British auto industry, which needs gigafactories to ensure its survival in the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). But as the rural Somerset community prepares for Agratas’s mega project, there are questions about its path to successful delivery.

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Deliberate planning

By the time BAE closed its Bridgwater facility in 2008, 130 local industrial jobs had been lost. After several failed attempts to sell the 635-acre site, it was acquired in November 2017 by Salamanca Group, an investment and advisory firm, who sought to turn it into an innovation campus, which it later called Gravity. 

The vision was to take “a brownfield site and make it look like an iPhone”, says Martin Bellamy, the chairman of Salamanca Group, who notes the “lightly contaminated site” needed to be remediated. In April 2017, the Gravity Smart campus was granted enterprise zone status, allowing businesses located within its boundaries to apply for faster planning permission and incentives.

After the closure, there was “really serious, deliberate planning” to prepare for a future viable use of the former munitions site, says Ros Wyke, the lead for economic development, planning and assets at Somerset Council. “Rather than a random scattergun approach, [communities] need to be considered as to where your strengths are and what you want to [achieve],” she adds.

Just 30 minutes’ drive from Agratas’s site is another nationally strategic project, Hinkley Point C, where France’s EDF Energy and China’s General Nuclear Power Group are building two new nuclear reactors. While Agratas’s gigafactory is a “a very different environment” to Hinkley Point, which is a longer term construction project with about 12,000 workers on site, Ms Wyke says Somerset Council has learnt a lot about how to prepare the workforce and supply chain for mega projects.

Supply chain development

For Agratas’s parent, Tata Group, which also owns automakers Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Motors, the Somerset plant will supply batteries to their own EV brands before seeking other opportunities. Given the vulnerabilities of supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic, the gigafactory project is a case of “onshoring and getting control over some of our critical componentry”, says Simon Baldey, the senior vice-president of Agratas’s operations in the UK.

While Agratas reviewed potential sites across Europe, including in Spain and Germany, Mr Baldey says the Gravity site was “the best option” for their requirements, including site size, access to power, transport connectivity and the ability to access and train a skilled workforce. Constructing the project in phases, Agratas plans to start production by the end of 2026.

“We’re hoping [our gigafactory] will act as a significant flag landing on the UK mainland and help attract others [in the supply chain],” he adds, noting that “there will need to be European co-location” due to EU legislation requiring 40% of battery components to be sourced in Europe by 2030. Salamanca Group is in early discussions with artificial intelligence infrastructure companies to locate on the Gravity site, according to Mr Bellamy.

However, the production of battery components used in Agratas’s Somerset site is likely to be done from outside the UK, which lacks the domestic supply chain for components like cathodes and anodes used in EV batteries.

Given its unique size and position, the localisation of the battery supply chain in Europe has been a boon for the former munitions site in Somerset. But with an aim to develop and employ a workforce of 4000 at full capacity, there remains a long road ahead to the success of the mega project.

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This article first appeared in the August/September 2024 print edition of fDi Intelligence.