Northvolt battery plant sparks life, a first for Europe

Northvolt said its new Gigafactory in northern Sweden has assembled its first battery cell, making it the first European company to design and manufacture batteries on the continent.

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The first batteries will be held by Northvolt for further testing and verification

Sweden’s Northvolt said Wednesday that its new Gigafactory in northern Sweden has assembled its first battery cell, making it the first European company to design and manufacture batteries on the continent.

The cell is of a prismatic cell format – a variety of thin and light batteries – and came off the assembly line on Tuesday.

Northvolt CEO Peter Carlson told Reuters the new factory would produce a battery this year “even if it means the first battery is made on New Year’s Eve”.

“What we did yesterday was take some cells as part of rolling out the machinery from start to finish during the whole cell assembly process,” a spokesperson said.

He said the first batteries would be kept by Northvolt for further testing and verification, and would be kept as trophies later.

The commissioning and upgrading of the factory will continue until 2022, when the first commercial customer deliveries will be made, the company said in a statement.

The factory is set in the small, industrial town of Skeleftia, Sweden’s main conglomerate of mines and mineral resources.

Its mining history, at least for gold, earned it the nickname of “Gold Town”.

The company is aiming to achieve 60 gigawatt hours (GWh) of production capacity for the Skeleftia plant as it aims to capture at least 20-25% market share in Europe by 2030.

It has received contracts worth over $30 billion from customers such as BMW, Fluence, Scania, Volkswagen, Volvo Cars and Polestar.

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Northvolt will compete with Tesla and Asian battery makers such as Panasonic, LG Chem and CATL.

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