Just a few months ago, Northvolt's gigafactory, built on the edge of Skelleftea nearly 800 kilometers north of Stockholm, embodied Sweden's green reindustrialization as well as Europe's mobilization, willing to fight to safeguard its strategic autonomy. Founded in 2016 by two former Tesla employees, the Swedish start-up's ambition was to compete with China and the US by producing the greenest electric batteries on the planet, with factories in Sweden, Poland, Germany and Canada.

But eight years after its creation, Northvolt is on the verge of bankruptcy and has become a symbol of a European economy seriously stalling, as described by former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi in the report he submitted to the European Commission on September 9. Of the $15 billion (€13.9 billion) raised by the company since its creation, nothing remains: its coffers are empty, and production is not taking off.

On September 23, Northvolt announced it was cutting 1,600 jobs in Sweden, or 20% of its worldwide workforce. Two weeks earlier on September 9, the group had presented a restructuration plan, including the suspension "until further notice" of operations at its cathode plant in Skelleftea and the abandonment of its project for a cathode-active materials production plant in Borlänge, also in Sweden. Since then, its subsidiary responsible for expanding the Skelleftea plant has declared bankruptcy. Volvo Cars, controlled by China's Geely, has announced that it intends to independently build a battery plant in Gothenburg, originally planned in collaboration with Northvolt.

The first doubts arose at the end of 2023 when the daily Dagens Industri revealed that the Skelleftea plant had delivered only a tiny fraction of its planned output in the first nine months of the year, a far cry from the 16 gigawatt-hours initially announced. The final blow came in June, when German carmaker BMW, a shareholder in Northvolt, cancelled an order worth 22 billion crowns (€1.9 billion), complaining about the quality of the batteries and delivery delays.

And yet, the year had started well. In January, Northvolt had secured a $5 billion loan from some 20 entities, including the European Investment Bank. However, this green loan, the largest ever issued in Europe, can only be used to finance the expansion of the Skelleftea site, which has just been halted. This summer, Northvolt's management did unsuccessfully attempt a capital increase.

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