An Australian firm has swooped for Johnson Matthey’s battery materials business in a £50m deal, acquiring several UK sites while also saving jobs.
EV Metals Group has snapped up the Battery Materials business assets in Billingham on Teesside, plus sites in Oxford, Germany and Poland, together with a package of patents, licences and a team of 100 technical personnel in the deal, to become “a new force” in the electric vehicles supplies market.
The deal comes five months after Johnson Matthey placed 150 staff at the firm’s Billingham plant under consultation, after owners announced plans to close the battery materials business. At the time, the company had been developing a next-generation battery cathode material to increase the range of electric vehicles, but it said that while demand for battery materials was accelerating, so was competition from alternative technologies and other manufacturers.
