Northvolt should find an industrial successor before the factory gets cold finally

Nordic battery giant Northvolt Bankruptcy is Sweden’s largest bankruptcy and concretizes huge risks and problems associated with green business.

The fall of the company is due to the hesitation and lack of confidence of the company’s financiers, but the ultimate reason is the complete failure of the Northvolt Skellefteå factory in increasing battery cell production fast enough.

The company was unable to redeem its production promises. The hurry to speed up production also brought quality defects to the battery cells, which, for example, led to the fact that BMW Last year withdrew from billions of euros in agreement with Northvolt.

Northvolt was founded in 2015 under promising stars. The electric car boom in the world brought a bright view of the construction of battery cell factories in Europe as well.

In 2017, the company announced that it would build a Gigafactory factory in the municipality of Skellefteå. Customer contracts had been concluded by EUR 27 billion, including BMW, Scanian, Volkswagen, Volvo Cars and Polestarin with. Northvolt sought a market share of 20-25 % in Europe by 2030.

However, too many things went wrong. Founder of Northvolt Peter Carlsson The problems summed up in an interview with SVT in Sweden. The production of a high -quality battery consists of more than 200 demanding stages, no one must fail. And here just Northvolt failed. The production of battery cells is just much more complicated than was believed in Sweden.

However, Northvolt is not alone in Europe. In addition to Northvolt VexorousVolkswagen PowerCo, Stolland and Mercedes-Benzin supported Automotive Cells CompanY has all been in trouble with battery cell production and have frozen their plans for building cellular factories.

Descriptive is the world’s largest battery cell maker, Chinese Catl: ​​n CEO Robin Zengin A snap from European cellular manufacturers: “They have the wrong design, the wrong process and the wrong equipment. How can they grow?” (PhD 25.11.2024).

What does Northvolt bankruptcy mean in the future? At least the redistribution of chips. The company is invested in approximately EUR 10 billion, but for example its major owners Volkswagen, Goldman Sachs, Vargas HoldingPeter Carlsson and The Publishing Pension of the Work Mother You hardly get more than rips back from their investments.

However, bankruptcy may bring another opportunity for a possible bankruptcy buyer if the buyer has to believe that the skills of the Skellefteå plant have improved through difficulties.

It would be important for the electrification and self -sufficiency of European traffic to maintain and develop competence in the production of batteries in the future. In a crisis, this is a huge importance.

Therefore, it would be important for Northvolt to have an industrial sequel before the Skellefteå factory is completely cooled.