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Swedish electric battery group Northvolt announced on Wednesday that it has started production in its “giga-plant” in Sweden, the first of its kind launched by a European group on the Old Continent, according to Le Figaro.
Intended to compete with Tesla and Asian manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries for the automotive industry, the plant located in Skellefteå in northern Sweden assembled its first electric battery cell “last night”, Northvolt said in a statement.
When it reaches full capacity, the plant will produce batteries to equip one million electric cars each year, with an annual production capacity of 60 gigawatt-hours (GWh). “Marking a new chapter in European industrial history, the cell is the first to be entirely designed, developed and assembled by a battery company in Europe,” says Northvolt.
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Tesla is set to launch its first battery plant in Europe and Asian groups have major plants in Poland and Hungary, but no European group has so far operated a factory of this size. Northvolt, one of Europe’s great battery hopefuls, has won $30bn worth of orders from European auto giants such as BMW and Volkswagen, as well as Volvo, with which it plans a second huge plant in Europe.
The former start-up’s “Northvolt Ett” plant already employs 500 people and will grow to 3000 at full capacity. The Swedish company was founded in 2016 by Swede Peter Carlsson and Italian Paolo Cerruti, two former Tesla employees.
Shareholders include Volkswagen, Goldman Sachs, BMW, Nordic funds and Spotify founder, Swedish billionaire Daniel Ek. In addition to European funding, Northvolt has also benefited from European money, as the EU tries to catch up on the backlog. Europe only accounted for 3% of the world’s battery production in 2020, ahead of China, which dominates the market, but aims to reach 25% by the end of the decade.