Electric cars|Northvolt was the first European electric car battery manufacturer. It started operating at the end of 2021.
Swedish Northvolt was supposed to be a trendsetter in the European battery industry, but its future is threatened by the weaker-than-expected sales success of electric cars.
Northvolt is slashing its workforce and looking for new partners in its battery business to save its struggling first ‘gigafactory’, Financial Times (FT) tells.
Northvolt has so far raised $15 billion in venture capital for its business.
It announced on Monday that it would halt production of cathode active materials (CAM) used in lithium-ion batteries at the plant. It said it would seek to buy replacement materials from China or South Korea.
Northvolt has also said that it is looking for a buyer for its business focused on energy storage in Gdansk, Poland, and that it is delaying the construction of three other gigafactories from what was previously planned.
Other Volkswagen, Goldman Sachs, BMW, Siemens and Blackrock have been financiers of Northvolt.
Currently, Northvolt employs seven thousand people.
Over the past year, Northvolt has been in the news due to the deaths and injuries of workers at its factory in Skellefteå, northern Sweden. This year, four employees have died outside of their shifts.
Electric cars manufacturers are currently in fierce competition. In Europe and the United States, special Chinese imports have been countered with various protective tariffs.
Northvolt was the first European electric car battery manufacturer. It started operating at the end of 2021.
However, production has not developed as expected.
The annual capacity of the Skellefteå gigafactory near the coast of the Baltic Sea in northern Sweden would be 16 gigawatt hours, but the annual production is currently less than one gigawatt hour, FT says.
Correction 9.9. at 9:27 p.m. The main picture of the story did not show the Northvolt factory as the caption said, but the picture showed a barracks village built for the factory workers. Picture changed.