Today, we have gone public and officially announced the launch of EVera Recruitment to the UK media.
We are proud to be Europe’s first and only dedicated recruitment consultancy for the battery and electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing sector. Our team of six brings over 50 years of battery and EV technical knowledge and experience, which we think is essential in being able to seek out the future workforce for the estimated half a million jobs the industry will create in the UK over the next 20 years.
Currently, approximately 10% of car registrations in the UK are hybrid or electric. The UK Government is predicting that by 2040, over 70% of vehicles sold across Europe will be electric, whilst the UK’s battery value chain is estimated to be worth £12 billion by 2025. In 2015, there were just five Gigaplants (factories that make lithium-ion battery cells) in the planning or construction stages globally – now there more than 160.
Steve Doyle, CEO of EVera, says: “In the last few years, there has been a steady increase in the move to electric vehicles and this is going to grow exponentially over the next couple of decades. With our historic experience and strength in manufacturing, there is a huge opportunity here for the UK to grasp and ensure it takes a leading position in what will be a global industry.
“Just in the next five years, we could easily be looking at needing 20,000 new jobs, including roles that no-one’s ever seen in the UK before. Over the next twenty years, it is estimated that the industry could create up to 500,000 jobs here. It’s incredibly exciting.”
As these Gigaplants are so new, it is likely that anyone taking a job in one of these factories will never have worked in one before. However, we believe that if you break the production line down into its constituent parts, then some of the processes exist in parallel industries.
“There will be plenty of people with transferable skills who could find a whole array of new jobs open to them,” says Doyle. “For example, the Lithium powder mixing and slurry processes at the start of the production process are very similar to some of those in food manufacturing, such as chocolate bars – so it’s almost just swapping the cocoa for lithium. The electrolyte filling stage is similar to putting vinegar or ketchup into individual sachets, and some of the deposition processes to make the cathodes and anodes are like those used in the print industry.”
