Arrival selects EY-Parthenon for UK businesses administration

Electric vehicle firm Arrival has selected EY-Parthenon for the administration of its UK wing. The firm will continue production in the US.

Arrival is a British electric vehicle manufacturer, founded in 2015 by Russian telecom billionaire businessman Denis Sverdlov, the former deputy minister of mass communications to the Kremlin. It leases two micro factories in Oxfordshire and owns the manufacturing equipment, with its UK headquarters in Banbury. Arrival primarily focuses on lightweight commercial vehicles, and planned to use simple manufacturing processes to build electric vans, buses and taxis cheaply.

Much had previously been written about the company’s proposed production methods – taking place in so-called "micro-factories", which would be much smaller than traditional manufacturing plants and could be set up relatively easily. This apparent innovation led to Arrival quickly gaining the attention of investors around the world – and when it was launched on the Nasdaq stock market in the USs in 2021, it briefly hit a valuation of $13 billion (then £9 billion), making it the biggest ever initial stock market listing for a UK tech company at the time.

Like so many other start-ups which obtain huge valuations on promises of innovation, however, Arrival struggled to live up to that hype. Despite already having received orders for 10,000 vehicles from the US distribution giant UPS, and having investment from both UPS and Hyundai, Arrival floundered when it came to actually getting its designs into production. Notable setbacks included a fire at the firm’s Banbury facility, while one of its vans was being demonstrated in 2022. 

Early in 2023, Arrival acknowledged the financial pressures it was under, and said it would cut its 800-strong workforce in half. It also switched production from the UK to North Carolina in the US – while still employing some 400 people globally. 172 of these have stayed in its UK wing in Banbury, until now.

The UK-based operations of Arrival have been placed in administration. Nearly 40 of its staff have already been made redundant, while others are being retained to assist with the sale of the business and assets by administrators from EY-Parthenon. Simon Edel, Alan Hudson and Sam Woodward, of EY-Parthenon’s turnaround and restructuring strategy team, will now seek buyers for the remaining assets.

A statement from the administrators noted that "the group's liquidity position has been impacted by a challenging market and macroeconomic conditions resulting in delays getting the group's products to market.”