Britishvolt will not complete the Quebec battery industry. The precarious situation in which the British company finds itself forces it to bury its Quebec cell factory project – the last step in the chain before the assembly of the batteries, confirms the former Quebec Prime Minister Philippe Couillard.
Posted at 9:26
He has not been employed by Britishvolt for “a few days”, he explained, in a telephone interview with La Presse.
“My motivation was to participate in a project in Quebec,” says Mr. Couillard. From the moment there is no project in Quebec, my motivation is no longer there. The current state of the company’s finances is incompatible with a project outside the UK. »
PHOTO PHILIPPE BOIVIN, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Former Prime Minister Philippe Couillard ran the Canadian branch of Britishvolt
If the Legault government must look to other options to complete the ecosystem of the battery industry, the former Liberal prime minister, who headed the Canadian branch of Britishvolt, believes that the “pull factors” of Quebec “remain good”. He expects to see other actors come forward.
Despite its interest in the province, the British company still did not own the land it coveted in the Bécancour industrial and port park – the place favored by the Legault government to develop the battery industry.
Québec’s strategy consists of attracting projects at all stages of the battery industry, i.e. the extraction of resources such as graphite and lithium spodumene, the transformation of materials into battery quality components, the manufacture of anodes and cathodes (main component of a battery), assembly of cells and manufacture of battery modules.