Northvolt to Stop Production in June With No Buyers in Sight

While production is set to stop by the end of next month, efforts to identify a purchaser for the plant remain ongoing

Northvolt AB will stop making cells at its last remaining factory in northern Sweden at the end of June, marking the demise of what was once Europe’s best hope of a homegrown battery champion.

An absence of buyers to save the battery maker led the trustee managing its bankruptcy estate to conclude production needs to wind down, according to a statement on Thursday that confirmed an earlier report by Bloomberg News.

“The bankruptcy estate does not foresee any realistic prospects for a purchaser to assume control of the production in the near term,” trustee Mikael Kubu said in the statement.

The plant in Skelleftea has been running one production line making cells for truckmaker Scania CV AB ever since the court-appointed trustee put the group’s business and assets up for sale in March. Kubu said that the support of one customer “is not sustainable in the long term for a single stakeholder, nor for the bankruptcy estate itself.”

The decision to wind down production effectively marks the end of the road for the Swedish manufacturer. Fast growth and several, large-scale factory projects became Northvolt’s undoing as costs ballooned and its debt pile swelled to $5.8 billion. The flagship plant, called Northvolt ETT, had been plagued by operational setbacks and challenges in trying to ramp up production.

While production is set to stop by the end of next month, Kubu said efforts to identify a purchaser for the plant remain ongoing.

Earlier today, a virtual meeting was held for staff including the 900 people working at the factory, hosted by chief operating officer Matthias Arleth. Spokesperson Matti Kataja declined to comment on the details of the meeting but described it as a regular update, speaking by phone beforehand.

Scania has been one of Northvolt most vocal backers and biggest customers, and had planned to rely on the manufacturer for batteries for its electric trucks. The truck maker in April agreed to buy Northvolt’s heavy-industry battery unit, including production capabilities, a research and development centre, and a team of about 260 employees.

Last month Scania chief executive Christian Levin said the company had no ambition to buy the flagship factory from the bankruptcy estate. Northvolt has previously said it was discussing potential tie-ups with Asian competitors, but no saviour has emerged from South Korea, and China’s CATL has also sought to tone down expectations.

Speaking in a recent interview, the billionaire founder and chairman of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., Robin Zeng said that while the company is talking to several creditors about helping Northvolt, “it’s not certain yet” and “we have limited resources.”

Northvolt’s failure is not unique with Europe’s bid to build a regional battery industry to break China’s dominance faltering in other countries. UK battery startup Britishvolt Ltd. collapsed last year before it could open a planned £3.8 billion (US$5.1 billion) site in Blyth — just as CATL and Asian peers are expanding on the continent.

Northvolt has been looking for money since mid-last year and filed for Chapter 11 in the United States in November in one of the largest bankruptcies of 2024. It received about US$245 million in a temporary lifeline then from Scania, buying time to look for new industrial partners.

The company’s woes had already led a number of other investors to write down their holdings last year. Northvolt’s major shareholders included Volkswagen AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s asset management arm and Swedish investor Vargas Holding AB.

The prospect of the flagship factory shuttering stands to cause major repercussions for the local area, which up until last year had seen an inflow of people coming to work at the plant and the ecosystem of industries that sprung up around it. Skelleftea has invested 100 million kronor ($10.4 million) of public money into the industrial site.

“This whole area is planned for battery production,” City Director Kristina Sundin Jonsson said in an interview earlier this month. Not having production at the factory “will have a huge effect in the short run for Skelleftea,” she said in an interview last week.

—With assistance from Charles Daly.

Bloomberg.com

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