Coventry gigafactory may be downsized, CEO admits

A planned advanced manufacturing plant on the site of Coventry Airport may have to be downsized.

Under the £2.5bn redevelopment plans, the site was set to include seven manufacturing facilities, creating "a centre of excellence for battery technology, advanced manufacturing and clean energy".

But the site's owner has yet to find a car manufacturer to make the plans viable.

Steve Rigby, chief executive of Rigby Group, said: "We remain hopeful for securing battery manufacturing in the UK, I don't think it will be at the full scale we planned in Coventry."

He added: "We are competing globally, China is a significant force, with frankly significant capacity, so we are continuing to engage."

The runway closed on 11 June to make way for the development of GreenPower Park, a joint venture between Coventry City Council and the airport, which is owned by Rigby Group.

In his latest interview with the BBC, Rigby remained hopeful the plans could continue, even if they were not as large as originally envisioned.

"There are at any one time a number of live discussions happening, there are two happening currently."

"We do remain hopeful to secure, at the very least, a single battery manufacturer at Coventry Airport."

Coventry City councillor Lynnette Kelly said: "We want to be at the forefront of advanced manufacturing and we'd like there to be a gigafactory on that site, that takes up the whole site and manufacturing batteries.

"But we have to be realistic, at the moment people are interested in parts of the site rather than making one giant factory."

Rigby said they had to look beyond the automotive sector to other advanced manufacturing industries.

"We do have defence which is an important sector, we do have aerospace, which the East Midlands do very well on.

"And we have new areas like space coming through, which with SpaceX, I think there's a new dawn on space as an area."

Rigby said he believed it was time to look to the future, rather than rely on the city's automotive history.

"We've got these other areas and I think we need to be brave in the region and not just think about our heritage.

"You will see us alongside the local authority, who are co-owners with us, and alongside the planning authority, start to think about how we can start to attract more variety of tenants to the region as well."

Rigby added in previous discussions with Coventry City Council, the authority was clear with him that it wanted the site used for "high-paying, well-skilled jobs".

"And we join them on that."

Kelly said the council wanted the site to create "high-quality advanced manufacturing jobs" and it would "stick to that principle".

"What we don't want is for it to be warehousing or anything like that."

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