EDF becomes Pod Point majority shareholder
The French electricity company Électricité de France (EDF) has acquired a majority stake in the British charging station manufacturer Pod Point. The deal is part of a new joint venture with the finance company Legal & General Capital.
The rumoured £100 million acquisition of Pod Point is the EDF Group’s largest investment to date in the e-mobility market and part of its plan to become the leading electric mobility energy company in France, the UK, Italy and Belgium. Officially, as usual, the purchase price is being kept quiet. The public, on the other hand, is that Legal & General Capital has a 23 percent stake in the joint venture. The investor company Pod Point had already been providing capital for more than a year.
Pot Point – a charging infrastructure specialist founded in 2009 – has around 62,000 charging points in Great Britain and 6,600 charging points in Norway. The majority are so-called destination chargers, i.e. charging solutions for the home, workplace or other destinations. According to the company, almost 3,000 charging points are also part of a public network. Its locations include Tesco and Lidl stores, Center Parcs and properties owned by Legal & General.
For the EDF Group, the majority stake in Pod Point is a further step towards establishing its services in the UK. The interest in the UK has been there for some time: The French state-owned group only acquired the British start-up Pivot Power, which specialises in battery storage and charging infrastructure, in November. Together with its partner Nuvve, EDF had also announced at the end of 2018 that it intended to install up to 1,500 V2G charging stations in the UK for EDF business customers.
EDF’s UK head Simone Rossi is convinced that the latest transaction will help many customers to switch to electric vehicles and thus reduce their carbon footprint. She also notes that the additional power requirements of electric vehicles will require urgent investment in low-carbon power generation. In line with French policy, she has not only renewable energies in mind, but also nuclear energy.
With reporting by Cora Werwitzke, France.
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