Northvolt to slash 1,000 employees in Skellefteå

Ramp-up of battery production for Europe’s car industry wasn’t that easy as pioneering company Northvolt first thought.

“Development of Northvolt Ett expansion project will be suspended,” the company writes in a statement about the future of the factory in Skellefteå.

The move comes amid financial challenges as growth in production of electric vehicles in Europe slows down.

It is a challenging macroeconomic climate, Northvolt explains as it forecasts about 1,600 redundancies in Sweden. A thousand of those are working at the giga-plant in Skellefteå. The plant produced its first cell in late 2021 at a time when sales of EVs skyrocketed. 

The company will now focus on running the 16 GWh Northvolt Ett instead of expanding an additional 30 GWh of annual cell manufacturing capacity.

Northvolt produces batteries for several European carmakers including Volvo and Volkswagen.

Skellefteå production isn’t the only northern battery factory in trouble. In Mo i Rana, northern Norway, Freyr Battery in late August informed employees there would be a considerable reduction in workforce as the not yet operational plant was put on hold.