The Swedish company Northvolt has started commercial deliveries of battery cells to a car manufacturer. The first deliveries from the Ett factory in Skellefteå, Sweden, have been made on schedule. Production has only been running for a few months.
The Northvolt factory currently employs about 1,000 people, a company spokesperson told the Bloomberg news agency. About 150 new employees are now to be hired each month. Northvolt expects the number of employees there to rise to around 4,000 in the long term, up from an earlier estimate of 3,000.
Northvolt had commissioned the factory at the end of December 2021 with the production of the first battery cell. The company was confident, naming the date as “a new chapter in European industrial history” as it would be the first battery cell “designed, developed and assembled entirely in a Gigafactory by a domestic European battery company”. Production is expected to increase further later this year.
The Swedish company has signed contracts with carmakers worth more than $50 billion so far. Among its customers are BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo Cars and Polestar.
Northvolt recently received a grant of 155 million for its planned battery cell factory in Germany. A few days ago, Hydrovolt, Northvolt’s joint venture with Norsk Hydro, also commissioned its battery recycling plant in Fredrikstad, Norway.
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Keyword: Northvolt starts delivering cells from Skellefteå factory