Just a few months ago, the Northvolt gigafactory, built on the outskirts of Skelleftea, almost 800 kilometers north of Stockholm, embodied the green reindustrialization of Sweden as well as the mobilization of a Europe willing to fight to guarantee its strategic autonomy. Founded in 2016 by two former Tesla employees, the Swedish start-up aimed to compete with China and the United States by producing the greenest electric batteries on the planet, with factories in Sweden, Poland, Germany and Canada.
But, eight years after seeing the light, Northvolt is on the verge of bankruptcy, a symbol of a Europe in full decline, as portrayed by the former president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi, in the report he presented to the European Commission on the 9th. of September. Of the 15 billion dollars (13.9 billion euros) raised by the company since its creation, nothing remains: its coffers are empty and production is not taking off.
On September 23, Northvolt announced the loss of 1,600 jobs in Sweden, or 20% of its global workforce. Two weeks earlier, on September 9, the group had presented a restructuring plan that included the suspension “until further notice” of the activities of its cathode plant in Skelleftea and the abandonment of its project for a plant to produce active cathode materials in Borlänge, also in Sweden. Since then, its subsidiary, responsible for the expansion of the Skelleftea factory, declared bankruptcy and the manufacturer Volvo Cars, controlled by the Chinese company Geely, announced that it wanted to build a battery factory in Gothenburg on its own, initially planned in collaboration with Northvolt. .
The first doubts appeared at the end of 2023, when the newspaper Dagens Industry revealed that the Skelleftea plant had delivered, during the first nine months of the year, only a tiny part of what was planned, far from the 16 gigawatt hours initially announced. The final blow came in June: German manufacturer BMW, a Northvolt shareholder, canceled an order worth 22 billion crowns (1.9 billion euros), complaining about the quality of the batteries and delays in deliveries.
“Incompetence” of leaders
Although the year had started well. In January, Northvolt obtained a $5 billion loan from around two dozen organizations, including the European Investment Bank. However, this green loan, the largest ever obtained in Europe, can only be used to finance the expansion of the Skelleftea site, which has just been discontinued. This summer, Northvolt management attempted to carry out a capital increase, but to no avail.
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