How Tata's £4 billion UK battery factory will reshape Somerset

Less than a mile from the M5 near Bridgwater in Somerset, another piece of the UK’s electric car industry is being prepared.

Groundworks close to the village of Puriton have begun, people in hard hats are measuring up and notices are being pinned to signposts warning of changes to rights of way.

One month after it was first announced, Tata Group’s £4 billion gigafactory, projected to be one of the largest in Europe when EV batteries begin rolling off the production lines in 2026, looks like it might actually happen.

It’s on a 620-acre site called Gravity: a smart technology campus itself on the site of a former Royal Ordnance factory, which, during the Second World War, made an explosive called RDX for use in bombs such as the 12,000lb Tallboy. It was a huge operation that relied on millions of gallons of water each day from the surrounding Somerset Levels but which also generated surplus electricity that it sent to local power stations.

Some 80 years later, parallels exist between it and Gravity in terms of the latter’s scale, the infrastructure required to support it and its anticipated contribution to the local economy.

“Gravity will be huge and, like the old ordnance plant, have its own rail extension to the local mainline plus a new exit on the M5,” says Ian Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset.

“The gigafactory alone will create up to 4000 jobs, plus thousands more in the supply chain. The deal to get the new factory [a location in Spain was also considered] took longer than we thought, but now, with construction of Hinkley Point C power station already creating jobs a few miles from here, Morrisons opening a new food factory in town and logistics firms basing themselves beside the M5, the future for Bridgwater is bright.”

He is delighted, then, but are his constituents as pleased? Will the new battery plant be a blot on their landscape that will merely attract skilled workers from outside the region, deprive local employers of labour and drag up rents and property prices? Or is it an enterprise that will create wider opportunities and raise regional skill and pay levels? To try to find out, Autocar spent a day in the area quizzing locals and businesses.

Thanks to its old port and good road and rail links to the south-west and the Midlands, Bridgwater has a long history as a manufacturing and distribution centre. The wealth that local businesses generated is evident in the fine buildings in the town centre.

But Bridgwater’s high street, like many up and down the country, looks tired and unloved. Luke, a security guard at Boots, blames big business and local landlords. “Skilled jobs at places like Hinkley and the gigafactory never go to locals,” he says. “People from outside always get them, then take the money out of the town. These people also put pressure on rented accommodation so landlords raise their rents. Hinkley and other big firms should pay directly into the local economy to help locals with rent deposits.”

It’s market day, and along from Boots is a stall selling doughnuts. Dough Bros was launched by stallholder Ricky and his two brothers during lockdown. “We saw what Krispy Kreme were doing and thought we could do it better so came up with our own artisan doughnuts,” he says.

Now, with his brothers manning their new shop in Taunton and Ricky touring markets around the region, the business is flying. Dough Bros is even supplying Hinkley. “We visit the power station once a month and sell around 1000 doughnuts on what they now call ‘doughnut day’,” adds Ricky. “The new gigafactory will be right up our street!”

It’s unlikely Dough Bros was the kind of supply-chain business Tata Group and politicians had in mind when they shook hands on Bridgwater’s gigafactory; they were more likely thinking of the types of businesses attending the town’s recruitment event.

Bridgwater Jobs Fair, organised by Stuart Wright, founder of Somerset Jobs, is proving extremely popular. Already by midday more than 400 people have passed through the doors keen to explore employment opportunities with a range of private companies and public organisations. Wright says many businesses are already feeling the pressure of the new gigafactory.

“It will be a massive project and some firms are here today because they want to get the best people before it does,” he says.

Representing The Outsource Recruitment Company, which screens potential employees for its clients, are Ellie (left; pictured below) and Nell (right; below). Today they’re keen to identify recruits for Electrified Automation, a company that, according to the flyer, “develops cutting-edge robotic technology and processes for the electric motor industry”.