Britishvolt remains a new, untested company, attempting to take on an Asian industry which has successfully dominated the sector for years. Only last year Johnson Matthey, the catalyst specialist which was until then one of the great hopes of the UK's nascent cell sector, abruptly pulled out of its plans to make battery materials.

According to a dossier of figures submitted privately to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and seen by Sky News, gigafactory capacity is forecast to be barely half the needed level by the end of the decade.