It was a big news story a few days ago, we know, but it’s just worth emphasising the importance of the Nissan factory to the North East. When it announced the establishing of a battery ‘gigafactory’ Nissan casually said it was set to create 2,000 new jobs.
That’s another 2,000 jobs. Plus the very many hundreds or even thousands that will be in the supply chain.
Of course, Nissan will be receiving government funds to help build its state-of-the-art gigafactory that should open in late 2024 and will produce batteries for up to 200,000 electric cars a year, but that’s not the point. We’ve just had the news that the Qashqai will be Mackem-built and now we have the battery plant.
And the UK will need a few more such sites of we’re to hit our renewables targets.
As a Nissan spokesman said: ‘Having established EV and battery production in the UK in 2013 for the Nissan Leaf, our Sunderland plant has played a pioneering role in developing the electric vehicle market.
Well done, Nissan and well done Sunderland.