Britain backs Tata battery plant

Britain has approved a £380 million grant for Tata Group’s battery arm, Agratas, to build a giant electric vehicle battery plant in Somerset. (gov.uk) Business Secretary Peter Kyle unveiled the funding on April 9 during a visit to the site near Bridgwater, where Agratas is building what the government called one of Europe’s largest gigafactories. (gov.uk) The factory is planned at 40 gigawatt-hours of capacity, enough to make it the largest battery manufacturer in Britain once all phases are complete, according to the Competition and Markets Authority’s Subsidy Advice Unit. (gov.uk, publishing.service.gov.uk) The project is tied directly to Jaguar Land Rover, Tata’s British carmaker, which the government identified as the plant’s anchor customer for battery cells made in Somerset. (gov.uk, gov.uk) Britain first secured Tata’s investment in July 2023, when Tata said it would spend more than £4 billion on its first gigafactory outside India. The site in Somerset was confirmed in February 2024. (gov.uk, bbc.com) The subsidy turns a political promise into a formal award. The Department for Business and Trade referred the proposed grant to the Subsidy Advice Unit on December 1, 2025, and the unit published its report on January 21, 2026. (gov.uk, publishing.service.gov.uk) Officials are presenting the grant as industrial policy, not a consumer rebate. The government said the plant would cut reliance on imported batteries and support domestic supply chains for zero-emission vehicles. (gov.uk, reuters.com) The economic pitch is large: the government said the site supports 4,200 direct jobs, while Somerset Council has said the wider investment could create about 4,000 permanent jobs and thousands more in the supply chain. (gov.uk, somerset.gov.uk) Britain is also building the labor pipeline around the plant. Skills England said on March 23 that it had created a battery-manufacturing apprenticeship unit to meet Agratas’ hiring needs in Somerset. (gov.uk) The grant does not end the bigger test for Britain’s electric vehicle strategy: turning one subsidized factory into a durable battery industry. For now, the government has decided that keeping Tata’s supply chain in Britain is worth £380 million in public money. (gov.uk, gov.uk)