Battery maker Northvolt says head of main plant to step down

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Swedish battery maker Northvolt said on Wednesday the head of its main plant would step down with immediate effect in the latest reorganisation of the cash-strapped group as it seeks to overcome persistent production problems.

Mark Duchesne, the head of the Northvolt Ett plant since mid-2023, will be replaced on an interim basis by Angeline Bilodeau, the vice president of Northvolt’s operations in North America, the company said.

Northvolt’s Swedish gigafactory, built to serve the European auto industry’s transition to electric vehicles, has said the ramp-up of its battery production had progressed more slowly than planned, and that it would seek to speed this up.

Duchesne, who had previously worked at Tesla and Chinese EV startup Byton as well as U.S. startup Nikola Motor Co., in June told Swedish business daily Dagens Industri that the last three months had amounted to the “worst quarter of (his) career”.

Northvolt announced in September it would slim down and cut jobs, sparking fears that Europe’s best shot at a home-grown electric vehicle battery champion would stall due to production problems, sluggish demand and competition from China.

The Northvolt Ett plant was built for an annual battery making capacity of 16 gigawatt-hours (GWh), but was producing in mid-September at an annual rate of less than 1 GWh, the company said at the time.

The output consisted in the middle of last month of some 60,000 battery cells per week with a plan to reach 100,000 cells weekly by the end of the year, Northvolt said at the time.

On Tuesday a Northvolt Ett subsidiary filed for bankruptcy after the factory expansion it was developing was cancelled, court filings showed, in a further sign of the group’s deepening problems.

The company has said it continues to seek a cash infusion from investors and lenders.

(Reporting by Marie Mannes, writing by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Mark Potter)