No shortage of striding ambition over at David Collard’s Scale Facilitation, the investment firm attracting much hype over grand schemes to manufacture electric car batteries en masse across multiple time zones.
Collard has received great press in the Financial Review, the latest published on Tuesday when he revealed a doubling-down on plans for a “gigafactory” in Britain. That’s to come at the expense, or at least ahead of, another gigafactory promised for Geelong that now seems to be on hold. And the difference between a factory and a gigafactory? Nothing. Elon Musk coined the word and it just means “really big factory”.
Anyway, Collard says bringing the British gigafactory online will see batteries dished out for cars as soon as next year, and maybe that’s true, but silky promises like these are as common as house dust in the renewables sector (looking at you, Andrew Forrest), so we’ll believe it when we see it. For now, a few doubts.
The Times of London published a deep dive into Collard over the weekend rightfully asking whether this 38-year-old hotshot out of PwC (once its youngest partner) possessed the requisite credentials in European manufacturing and green engineering to deliver billion-dollar gigafactories on multiple continents. Some recent ventures include cannabis plays registered to his parents’ house.
What’s more, Margin Call has happened upon some financial dysfunction at Scale’s Australian affiliate, Sanitex Global, which officials are blaming on technical hiccups. Apparently there’s a pile of money tied up in England. There’s a lump of cash sitting in India. There’s trouble with a Citibank wire account that’s been causing headaches.
All of which has meant that Scale’s Australia-based staff have gone unpaid for a number of weeks, and the company admitted as much in a statement to this column. There are contractors and suppliers chasing invoices, and lease payments on the Geelong factory site have also lapsed.
A spokeswoman said: “Any overdue outstanding invoices will be addressed prior to the end of the financial year, in the next invoicing payment cycle. Any lease payments would be included in this.”
She added that the company’s financial difficulties arose out of the UK transaction, leading to “numerous unforeseen challenges which have resulted in one payment delay for some people in our Australian affiliate”. Apparently the employees will get their money as soon as Thursday, but we’ll report back if they don’t.
Collard’s an interesting character. Just last month he was feted by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles at the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia, where the DPM gave a lengthy speech celebrating this proud son of Geelong. Marles also travelled to Scale’s headquarters at One World Trade Centre in NYC last year, and similarly raved about Collard during a launch party for another Scale business, Recharge Industries.
Presumably the Labor minister was motivated to do so by Collard’s commitment to improving US-Australia trade relations through the battery game. That’s what the Geelong project was supposed to offer at some point. Unfortunately for Marles that’s been put on hiatus. Meanwhile, the suffering workers going unpaid are based in his electorate.
Justice for Adler
Rodney Adler’s latest investment stab in a pet hotel appears to have fallen apart following a dispute with a business partner – except the breakdown wasn’t necessarily Adler’s fault on this occasion.
Looks like he and wife Lynda were among at least three investors in a cat and dog kennel that was supposed to be based in rural Sydney but never got up. That’s because a fourth participant, insolvency consultant Wayne Fraser, ended up suing the investors on the basis that they weren’t paying him enough rent, per an agreement they’d allegedly signed.
Basically Fraser took a CBA loan on the proposed address and agreed to accept $11,000 each month from Adler and the others to manage the mortgage repayments. That started in February 2022, except by August Fraser started claiming that he was owed not $11,000 but $16,500 each month, as it had been written in a separate commercial rent arrangement that everyone had apparently agreed to pay.
That was news to them, of course, and Supreme Court Justice Ashley Black didn’t buy Fraser’s gambit for about $100,000 in unpaid rent, either, dismissing the application. A trail of group emails clearly showed Fraser referring to monthly payments of $11,000 and not $16,000, which somewhat undermined his case.
The Adlers’ involvement came via Lynda’s private vehicle, Jaronach Pty Ltd, but Adler still gave evidence to the court as Lynda’s husband and “business adviser”. It was his contention that there was no discussion about paying the $16,000 as claimed by Fraser.
Chalk it up as a win after a string of well-documented losses for the former FAI chief executive. We made space for Adler and Fraser to make some remarks, but neither came back to us.
Banks play Jones like their fiddle
Not only is Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones wrapped tightly around Australian Banking Association chief Anna Bligh’s finger, but it’s the worst-kept secret in Canberra.
Striking journos jinx AFR summit
The Australian Financial Review was supposed to hold its Government Services Summit at the Canberra Hyatt on Tuesday but that’s on hold thanks to picketing journalists.